"I saw it on TV again recently and was just bowled over by it. In it's own way it's very intense: you've only basically got seven characters and they're all in same set up. There's very little break out from the library where they're all stuck. And so you really get the character development and the inter-relationships, and you really get to the heart of the kind of teenage cruelties and the way it all dissolves with their common plight. It's a very clever film. It's one of those films that creates a whole genre, not all of which I like – St Elmo's Fire, for example, was so sentimental it made me want to puke, but The Breakfast Club isn't like that. It's taut and it's very much about the teenage condition."

"As in the Max Ophuls film, Lean also deals with romantic love outside of marriage and intelligently understands that these relationships were sad and not meant to be. But with the end of marriage as anything more than a foolish, outdated formality that no one takes seriously anymore, the romantic film has logically disappeared, and there have been no great romantic leading roles for women ever since. The vulnerable, sympathetic character Katharine Hepburn so beautifully plays would be now considered some kind of neurotic nutcase, but I think it’s her best performance and it’s David Lean’s best film. He specialized in this genre of marital infidelity in films such as Brief Encounter and Passionate Friends, and when he gave it up for his outdoor spectacles, I don’t think he was ever as good again."

"This adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel examines the relationships between two sisters and their respective romantic partners in post–World War I England. Ken Russell does a fascinating job of exploring themes of jealousy, lust, homosexuality, fidelity, and social class in a challenging and often pointed way. He turns the notion of virtuous love on its head and, in true Russell fashion, throttles the characters and the audience, unflinchingly asking them the deeper questions that we typically dare not even ask ourselves. There are breathtaking locations, arresting cinematography, and a wrestling scene that makes Viggo Mortensen’s nude knife fight in Eastern Promises look tame. As with all Ken Russell movies, be prepared to have this one on your mind for a while after the credits have rolled."