[Pinky] is an adroit attempt to beat a highly controversial subject in a discreetly uncontroversial way; to flatter the public by giving them the types and situations they have always liked, while persuading them that this time such appreciation is only possible from persons of courageous outlook and advanced social consciousness.

Pinky is not really a "daring" film, except in so far as it admits that there is a colour question at all. It seems to me a fair film: it does not, I imagine, unreasonably distort either side of the picture. It is very smoothly directed…. But it is not, I repeat, daring. Compared with a really audacious film like Henry V or Hamlet, it has about as much daring as a cheese-mite. It is careful to affront no particular section of the public, to draw no particular conclusion, to outrage no particular code of cinema ethics...