Volume 28, Number 16 · October 22, 1981
The Young Pretender
By Murray Kempton
Prince of the City
directed by Sidney Lumet, screenplay by Sidney Lumet, by Jay Presson Allen
A great deal of harmless gaiety went out of our lives when we began calling movies 'films.' Prince of the City is a model instance of the movie that insists on being a film and proceeds inevitably to assault our common sense with the counterfeit of a moral lesson. It has been afforded a degree of critical respect extraordinary enough to rank it as a benchmark in the development of a process that our great-grandchildren, who had better be smarter than we are, will likely identify as the Dumbing of America.
Review, 737 words
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