Reunion

This enormously impressive film ranks as one of the best of countless pics dealing with the rise of Nazism in Germany in the early 1930s.

Reunion is a beautiful elegy to friendship in all its complexities and seeming contradictions and its astonishing emotional capacity to endure.

Harold Pinter's tight and unobtrusive script, Trauner's fine production design and Philippe Sarde's muted but expressive score ensure a feeling of all-round professionalism.

Its quiet drama is extremely effective, often because its young actors are so good. [05 Jul 1990]

Working from Harold Pinter's subtly suspenseful script, based on Fred Uhlman's spare, evocative novella, director Jerry Schatzberg captures the tensions of an emigre's return to the beloved country that betrayed him. [17 May 1991, p.E4]

Reunion is gratifying in the small ways most familiar from public-television's depictions of English upper-class behavior. The offhanded elegance of its settings, and the attractive crispness of its schoolboy manners...are a major part of its gently decorative appeal. [15 Mar 1991, p.C16]

In adapting the novel by Fred Uhlman, Pinter has created a screenplay that slogs along in a predictable, perfunctory manner and has fashioned a dramatic ending that's too tidily honed.[14 Apr 1991, p.6C]