 "I don't think Mr. March has done any better piece of work than this", noted John Mosher in his positive review for "The New Yorker".The film was named one of the National Board of Review's Top Ten pictures of the year and ranked eighth in the "Film Daily" annual critics' poll.In a much later review, however, Reverend Austin Spencer also found the film adaptation—when compared to the novel—inadequate, especially in its portrayal of the personal challenges that confronted the story's protagonist