Somewhere about the middle of East of Eden … there is a scene when the boy Caleb,… visits his mother whom he has discovered to be the proprietress of a brothel, in the hope of borrowing money for a business venture. This scene … is handled with such meaningful economy, and seems the result of such cogent understanding, that it contrasts sharply with the empty show of so much of the rest of the film, and the unhappy preferences this talented director seems in danger of continuing to follow.

East of Eden is a film without a centre. One feels that Kazan has been impressed by the allegorical universals implied by the pretentious Biblical parallels of John Steinbeck's novel…. To the basic themes of the various natures of love (distorting, blinding, or satisfying, and the consuming loneliness of the boy who yearns for it), Kazan only ever offers a peripheral...