Reception
According to "The Big Sleep Comparisons 1945/46", a featurette on the 2000 DVD release of Bacall's later film The Big Sleep, her reviews for Confidential Agent were largely negative, with particular aspersions cast on Bacall's performance, as a "pretty amateur".
According to film historian Robert Gitt, host of the featurette, Warner studio head Jack L. Warner was lobbied to order certain scenes in The Big Sleep reshot in order to rectify performance issues with Bacall identified in Confidential Agent, which he did.
In her own autobiography, Bacall said that she begged not to have to do the film, but couldn't break her contract that early, though her career never fully recovered from Confidential Agent.
Read more about this topic: Confidential Agent
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“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, thats 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 (18031882)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybodys face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (16671745)