Reception
The public liked Flynn's charming rogue of a character, his undisguised Tasmanian accent notwithstanding, but the critics found him to be the weak link in the production, with The New York Times writing, "Bette Davis' Elizabeth is a strong, resolute, glamour-skimping characterisation against which Mr. Flynn's Essex has about as much chance as a beanshooter against a tank." (needs actual citation) Many years later, however, Davis viewed the film with her friend, Olivia de Havilland. At the film's end, Davis turned to de Havilland and admitted, "I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Flynn was brilliant!"
Online critics have not been very kind to the film after its release on DVD, finding Flynn's portrayal rather stiff in comparison to the performances he gave in his more famous swashbucklers.
Read more about this topic: The Private Lives Of Elizabeth And Essex
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)