[Thanks to John Huston] "The Red Badge of Courage" has been transferred to the screen with almost literal fidelity….

Don't expect too much from it in the way of emotional punch—at least, not as much as is compacted in [Stephen] Crane's thin little book. For, of course, Mr. Crane was conveying the reactions of his hero to war in almost stream-of-consciousness descriptions, which is a technique that works best with words….

[The] major achievement of this picture is the whole scene, it re-creates of a battlefield near the Rappahannock (Chancellorsville) from the soldier's point of view…. Mr. Huston, who made "San Pietro," one of the great documentaries of World War II, can conceive a Civil War battle, and he has done so magnificently in this film.

Furthermore, he has got the sense of soldiers in that long-ago day and war—their looks, their attitudes, their idioms—as...