The New York Times‘s film critic, Vincent Canby, compared the 1983 show “taking an extremely slow Seventh Avenue Local to heaven in a long and over‑crowded ride, and the arrival–by which time one is exhausted–is always a bit of an anticlimax.”
For Canby, the show’s atmosphere is defined by “the solemnity of the annual Nobel ceremonies in Stockholm with the cheerful bad taste of the grand opening of a shopping center in Los Angeles.”
Canby didn’t realize in 1983 that in two decades the Oscar show would take place in a shopping mall!
