Avis Metacritic

Not As A Stranger taps into the raging fury and animal sexuality lurking underneath Mitchum’s quiet-storm demeanor; the film’s redemptive arc requires him to realize what he has in a good, wholesome woman like de Havilland, but Mitchum’s bedroom eyes and leering swagger suggest that he really belongs to a femme fatale like Grahame, who undoubtedly tumbled out of the womb clutching a cigarette in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other.

The exceptional cast helps to while away the platitudes and pieties, provided you can accept the likes of Mitchum, Sinatra and Marvin as somewhat wrinkly students.

The book featured lots of sexy scenes, but the film adaptation is, at best, cool and dispassionate. Mitchum's facial expressions seem to fall into two categories: sullen and sour.

Though some scenes come off fairly well, Mitchum is poker-faced from start to finish.

It is loaded with hospital lore, coldly realistic and compelling, but also it is creeping with ponderous characters. With so much dissecting in his picture—and so much of it being good—it is too bad that Mr. Kramer couldn't have done a little on his characters.