Original New York Times review of Star Wars
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 10:11PMCraig's MovieBlog has kindly, and perhaps illegally, reproduced Vincent Cambie's 1977 review of Star Wars for the New York Times. It's a great read. I particularly like the description of Alec Guiness's character as "a fellow in possession of what's called 'the force'". Here's an excerpt but click below for the whole review:
When the film opens, dark times have fallen upon the galactic empire once ruled, we are given to believe, from a kind of space-age Camelot. Against these evil tyrants there is, in progress, a rebellion led by a certain Princess Leia Organa, a pretty round-faced young woman of old-fashioned pluck who, before you can catch your breath, has been captured by the guardians of the empire. Their object is to retrieve some secret plans that can be the empire's undoing.
That's about all the plot that anyone of voting age should be required to keep track of. The story of Star Wars could be written on the head of a pin and still leave room for the Bible. It is, rather, a breathless succession of escapes, pursuits, dangerous missions, unexpected encounters, with each one ending in some kind of defeat until the final one.
These adventures involve, among others, an ever-optimistic young man named Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who is innocent without being naive; Han Solo (Harrison Ford), a free-booting freelance spaceship captain who goes where he can make the most money; and an old mystic named Ben Kenobi (Alec Guinness), one of the last of the Old Guard, a fellow in possession of what's called "the force," a mixture of what appears to be ESP and early Christian faith.