Golden Door, The

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.

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.

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.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The Golden Door feels, at points, like a silent film - a silent film with CinemaScope vistas and dazzling, saturated color.

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.

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.

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.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Beautiful, spacey, trans-oceanic odyssey.

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.

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.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The greatness of Golden Door is its tone; sympathetic but always wry.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Journey is weary, yet imaginative.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

As lovely to look at as it is dramatically inert.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Draggy Italian epic that's big on production values but skimpy on inspiration.

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.

Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling

A sluggish procedural on what it was like to make the journey to Ellis Island back in the day.

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.