Convicts 4

Without overmuch of subtlety and not tipping its hand despite all chances, this is suddenly a portrait of the artist as a free man in the sense that he knows himself and is able to express himself. That requires seventeen years or so, he leaves Dannemora.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times saw it rather fitfully, “the excitement and drive of the truth inherent in the career of a strange, exceptional and gifted man only rarely emerge from this dramatization.”

The Catholic News Service Media Review Office likewise, “the characters are one-dimensional and the results emotionally shallow.”

Eleanor Mannikka (Rovi), “routine biographical drama”.