Once again we are faced with a neither-film-nor-play production [Three Sisters], but it is, in Moura Budberg's liberal but satisfying translation and under Olivier's semicinematic direction, one at very least to fascinate devotees of the play….

Through several performances, in Geoffrey Unsworth's luscious cinematography (and I mean the adjective in praise of the uncluttered and naturally generated glow his work achieves), and in the pacing there is somehow a sensuality and a sexuality underlying the work that I had not hitherto felt. This gives it an immediacy and a throb of life that avoid the by-now strictly-from-satire "I vunt to go to Moscow" stiltedness the play achieves…. Primarily, one senses it in … Masha, a woman of wit and intelligence rather than of vapors, vibrant in her temper and explosive in her emotions. And she is counter-pointed beautifully by … Vershinin, who makes the caress of a glove lascivious and...