Most critics come down in favour, but the spread is wide: seven approve and four do not, with nobody sitting in the middle. Praise clusters on the look of the thing. Lean’s camera, the recreated snowbound Russia and the production design are admired almost everywhere, and Rod Steiger’s Komarovsky is named more often than either lead. Several critics admit the romance is soppy and say they are swept along regardless.
The reservations cluster on the story rather than the craft: passive characters, sentimentality, and a running time that some find hard to justify. The dissent falls into two camps. The reviews from 1966, in The New York Times and The New Yorker, fault the narrow romantic focus and characters who stand for virtue rather than do anything. The later objections, from Little White Lies and Collider, are simpler: a turgid slog. Even the admirers concede the plot; the disagreement is whether the pictures carry it.