Historic film guide up for sale

The review said Orson Welles' classic would not be a crowd pleaser

A historic influential film guide which dismissed modern-day masterpieces such as Citizen Kane is to be auctioned.

For more than 30 years, the reviews gave cinema-owners hard-boiled assessments of the commercial prospects of the latest releases.

The archive, dated 1933 to 1965, was preserved by a family who once owned a now defunct provincial cinema.

The near-complete collection of 11,000 articles from the McCarthy Agency is believed to be the work of one hand.

Unfavourable

The agency wrote in 1941 that the Orson Welles classic "defies all the canons of popular box-offices entertainment."

It had "little to recommend it outside of the specialised hall".

Other films now regarded as works of art also came in for some unfavourable treatment by the reviewer.

Breakfast at Tiffany's "is completely without heart" and its star, Audrey Hepburn, is "an entirely unsympathetic character".

Cat on the Tin Roof, starring Elizabeth Taylor is "average" and Humphrey Bogart's Key Largo is a "rather pointless melodrama".

Edward Maggs, the antiquarian dealer, is to offer the collection for £12,000 at this year's Antiquarian Book Fair at Olympia, London, in June.