One of the earliest Best Picture Oscar winners has all the hallmark limitations of its time, but is still a moving and effective look at one British family through years of war, strife and joy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 11, 2023

It remains a tad fruitless and humdrum, and is heavy on the dramatization of the passing of time.

| Jun 27, 2023

Quite as much as the cast, if not far more deserving of praise, is the superior direction of Frank Lloyd who has handled the unwieldy and sprawling material with disciplined intelligence and understanding art.

| Nov 9, 2022

The self-conscious good taste of it all creaks, but Noël Coward knows plenty of tricks, and the performers know how to get the most out of his lines.

| Jul 28, 2022

The production is technically brilliant if not very imaginative, and I got, as I did from the presentation in London, the sense of time’s tragedy which Mr. Coward intended us to have.

| Feb 18, 2022

The subject is high-minded... But its content is so well-spun, its performance so careful and its development so artistic that each scene, even isolated, is a small gem. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jan 13, 2021

These early reels, even though boresome, have bits of incidents that are necessary parts of the epic. If you can withstand them, you'll be amply rewarded.

| Jan 13, 2021

It is -- and let us say it as simply as possible -- a magnificent accomplishment.

| Jan 13, 2021

Fox has converted Noel Coward's London stage hit into a picture which paints graphically and poignantly the lives of two English families as they blend with dramatic events of the Twentieth Century.

| Jan 13, 2021

Though the concept is an amusing way to educate, it isn't the most effective at diversion.

| Original Score: 2/10 | Jul 25, 2020

Worse films have won the Best Picture Oscar... there is a real argument to be made, though, that it is the most defective movie to win that award.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | May 31, 2020

This is a kind of a film which is rare, and good, and true -- and one which you will not be ashamed to shed a tear over.

| Jan 25, 2020

As director of the film, Frank Lloyd deserves the most enthusiastic praise.

| Jan 24, 2020

It is a film that everyone should see.

| Jan 24, 2020

When one forgets the pace, the flow, and the really dignified and lovely quality of the picture - which is easier said than done - one can hear some very cheap theatrical observations from that choleric old empire-builder, Mr. Coward.

| Jun 5, 2019

It is, all in all, a picture that can be highly recommended and commended for its honesty of purpose and its magnificent characterizations, and one that deserves the very best in exploitation to put it over.

| Jan 5, 2018

Despite the old fashioned, mawkish tone, I found the story to have a cumulative effect on me.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 18, 2015

A gloriously, heart-rendingly beautiful, stirring picture of a generation in British family life.

| Feb 17, 2015

I can only glean that Cavalcade's obscurity is owed largely to the fact that it's just not that great a movie.

| Mar 28, 2014

Critics at the time loved this rather sanctimonious jaunt through history. Seen from the vantage point of post-Second World War egalitarianism, however, it all appears quaint and riddled with accepted class differences.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 11, 2014