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Golden Door, The

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 7 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by: Emanuele Crialese
Directed by: Emanuele Crialese
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 25, 2007
DVD: January 8, 2008
Running Time: 120 minutes, Color
Origin: Italy / Germany / France
Language(s): Italian / English
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for brief graphic nudity
Starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vincenzo Amato, Aurora Quattrocchi, Francesco Casisa, Filippo Pucillo, Federica De Cola, Isabella Ragonese, and Vincent Schiavelli
Golden Door is a classic tale of coming to America. It is a romantic fable that takes audiences into the very heart of this quintessential American experience -- as on man, driven by fantastic dreams and confronted with shocking realities, makes an epic odyssey in search of a brand new world. (Miramax Films)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
TV Guide Ken Fox
Sicilian-born filmmaker Emanuele Crialese takes a huge leap forward from his pretty but simplistic "Respiro" with this highly original, startlingly beautiful and emotionally resonant film.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
It's so hypnotically breathtaking, you don't realize you're not breathing. By the final shot, you don't realize you're crying either, but there go the tears.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
The familiar majesty of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline is replaced with anticipation and imagination. The sense of hope and wonder is the greater for it, and the sense of promise glows from the screen.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Peter Debruge
Virtually everything Americans know about Ellis Island they've learned from the movies, and virtually all those movies were American. Golden Door offers the other side of the story, the one that ends at Ellis Island instead of beginning there.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
The Golden Door feels, at points, like a silent film - a silent film with CinemaScope vistas and dazzling, saturated color.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Called "Nuovomondo" in its native Italy, it's bittersweet, neither as comic and sentimental as Charlie Chaplin's 1917 great silent comedy "The Immigrant," nor as cynical and epic as Elia Kazan's 1963 "America, America," but close to both.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Writ small, Golden Door is an absorbing and moving love story; writ large, it's the story we've never stopped telling ourselves.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
After countless films in which immigration plays a central role -- one of the earliest was Charlie Chaplin's 1917 silent classic "The Immigrant" while one of the best, Jan Troell's "The Emigrants," has never migrated to DVD -- you'd think the canon was essentially complete. Yet this visionary work adds to it by combining harsh realities with magic-realist fantasies.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Italian writer-director Emanuele Crialese is best known for the art-house piffle "Respiro" (2002), a sun-kissed fairy tale that didn't prepare me for the weight and solidity of this historical drama about a Sicilian peasant family immigrating to the U.S.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
What makes Mr. Crialese's telling unusual, apart from the gorgeousness of his wide-screen compositions, is that his emphasis is on departure and transition, rather than arrival.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
The greatness of Golden Door is its tone; sympathetic but always wry.
Read Full Review >Variety Jay Weissberg
An imaginative, intelligent and attractive Italo pic precisely when the country needs it most, Emanuele Crialese's Golden Door reps a solid piece of cinema that neither panders nor preaches.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jean Oppenheimer
With dialogue kept to a minimum, cinematographer Agnés Godard confirms her status as one of the most extraordinary visual artists working today.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
The acting is superb, especially the always alluring Charlotte Gainsbourg as a mysterious Englishwoman taking the ship to America. Agnes Godard's lensing is painterly, and Crialese's direction is seamless.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Historians at Ellis Island estimate nearly half of all Americans had at least one ancestor pass through there between 1892 and 1954.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
As lovely to look at as it is dramatically inert.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Draggy Italian epic that's big on production values but skimpy on inspiration.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The movie never really comes alive, and Crialese's coyness with Lucy's character is more frustrating than mysterious.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling
A sluggish procedural on what it was like to make the journey to Ellis Island back in the day.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Despite the hardships depicted, Golden Door is a sweet film at heart, playing witness to the birth pangs of modern America with both due respect and the occasional comic grace note, but not, oddly, one single shot of the Statue of Liberty.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Ezekiel B gave it a9:
A stunningly beautiful epic with a very original concept that breaks from the standard immigrant story, here it is the emigrant story about departure, and the dream.
Jim G gave it a7:
Some wonderful moments in this film visually and emotionally, but unfortunately uneven. Way better than most films however.
Kenneth B. gave it a4:
50 minutes shorter and maybe there is a movie here! It just dragged on. The art direction and cinematography was excellent.
