The most impressive aspect of Schlesinger’s film is its sense of place: the sunny, awesomely relaxed, fetid warmth captured by Conrad Hall’s sumptuous cinematography.

| Feb 8, 2025

The film was clearly carefully planned, designed, with costume, art department and direction, as well as cinematography, and editing to make it something that stands out to this day.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 14, 2023

With impeccable detail and merciless wit, John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust presents 1930s Los Angeles as a nightmarish circle in Dante’s Inferno.

| Dec 12, 2023

Having no emotional center, the film leaves little impression -- only a chill.

| Oct 11, 2023

This is the maximum downer, the most depressing film I've ever seen.

| May 9, 2023

Schlesinger illustrates with some authenticity a discreet homage to classic 1930s cinema, but his pessimistic critique of Hollywood's dark side is erratic and fatiguing. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 31, 2021

Where the book is bleak and concise, the film is lurid, garish, and sentimentalized.

| Sep 12, 2021

An astute and often troubling look behind the scenes of Hollywood during the 1930s.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 12, 2021

John Schlesinger brings West's vision to the screen, monstrosity for monstrosity, sadness for sadness, and makes of it an immensely affecting motion picture.

| Sep 12, 2021

The film sprawls too indulgently but remains enormously watchable throughout, with a bloody climactic riot summing up the futility of those involved.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 12, 2021

Schlesinger's film tends to be diffuse, choppy and unwieldy.

| Sep 12, 2021

I would be prepared to swear that Schlesinger has made exactly the movie I've been wanting to see for two decades.

| Sep 12, 2021

Schlesinger has followed West's masterful novel pretty faithfully, and what he loses in film's inability to duplicate West's crisp, imagery and precise prose he gains in the ability to bring the novel's panoply of grotesques to life...

| Sep 12, 2021

Conrad Hall's superb photography and Schlesinger's fine sense of detail all work to recreate the mood and substance of the novel.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 12, 2021

Under John Schlesinger's direction, "The Day of the Locust" is memorable in scene after scene.

| Sep 12, 2021

"The Day of the Locust" becomes merely a pastiche of vignettes picturing the book but lacking their intense depth.

| Sep 12, 2021

Despite individual scenes of great beauty and two performances of considerable depth, "The Day of the Locust" breaks down most every step of its splendiferous way, because it is so totally obvious about its higher purpose, about its ultimate meaning.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 12, 2021

It is a fantastic motion picture. For once, a Hollywood studio has invested millions of dollars in a film that deserves it.

| Sep 12, 2021

A beautifully crafted motion picture.

| Sep 12, 2021

As a movie, "The Day of the Locust" is a highly impressive work.

| Sep 12, 2021