Critical Reception
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said the "most haunting of American musical dramas has been transmitted on the screen in a way that does justice to its values and almost compensates for the long wait . . . N. Richard Nash has adapted and Otto Preminger has directed a script that fairly bursts with continuous melodrama and the pregnant pressure of human emotions at absolute peaks . . . Mr. Preminger, with close and taut direction, keeps you keyed up for disaster all the time. To this structure of pictorial color and dramatic vitality, there is added a musical expression that is possibly the best this fine folk opera has ever had. Under André Previn's direction, the score is magnificently played and sung, with some of the most beautiful communication coming from the choral group . . . To be sure, there are some flaws in this production . . . But, for the most part, this is a stunning, exciting and moving film, packed with human emotions and cheerful and mournful melodies. It bids fair to be as much a classic on the screen as it is on the stage."
Time observed, "Porgy and Bess is only a moderate and intermittent success as a musical show; as an attempt to produce a great work of cinematic art, it is a sometimes ponderous failure . . . On the stage the show has an intimate, itch-and-scratch-it folksiness that makes even the dull spots endearing. On the colossal Todd-AO screen, Catfish Row covers a territory that looks almost as big as a football field, and the action often feels about as intimate as a line play seen from the second tier. What the actors are saying or singing comes blaring out of a dozen stereophonic loudspeakers in such volume that the spectator almost continually feels trapped in the middle of a cheering section. The worst thing about Goldwyn's Porgy, though, is its cinematic monotony. The film is not so much a motion picture as a photographed opera . . . Still, there are some good things about the show. Sammy Davis Jr., looking like an absurd Harlemization of Chico Marx, makes a wonderfully silly stinker out of Sportin' Life. The singing is generally good — particularly the comic bits by Pearl Bailey and the ballads by Adele Addison . . . And the color photography gains a remarkable lushness through the use of filters, though in time . . . the spectator may get tired of the sensation that he is watching the picture through amber-colored sunglasses."
Channel 4 noted, "That it stands as an entertaining spectacle and the director's best musical is secondary in interest to the Hollywood politics surrounding it."
Read more about this topic: Porgy And Bess (film)
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