David Lardner of The New Yorker offered a similar opinion, writing that for most of the film, Davis "just plods along with the plot, which is longish and a little out of proportion to its intellectual content." Variety, however, wrote a more positive review, calling it <blockquote>the kind of drama that maintains Warner's pattern for box-office success ... Hal Wallis hasn't spared the purse-strings on this production. It has all the earmarks of money spent wisely. Irving Rapper's direction has made the picture move along briskly, and the cast, down to the most remote performer, has contributed grade A portrayals.</blockquote> Harrison's Reports called the film "intelligently directed" and praised Davis' performance as "outstanding", but warned that the film's "slow-paced action and its none-too-cheerful atmosphere make it hardly suitable entertainment for the masses."
Leslie Halliwell wrote in Halliwell's Film Guide: "A basically soggy script gets by, and how, through the romantic magic of its stars, who were all at their best; and suffering in mink went over very big in wartime."
Awards and nominations
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
|-
! Award
! Category
! Nominee(s)
! Result
! Ref.
|-
| rowspan="3"| Academy Awards
| Best Actress
| Bette Davis
|
| align="center" rowspan="3"|
|-
| Best Supporting Actress
| Gladys Cooper
|
|-
| Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
| Max Steiner
|
|-
| National Film Preservation Board
| colspan="2"| National Film Registry
|
| align="center"|
|}
Source material
Olive Higgins Prouty's novel, written in 1941, served as the basis for the film, and other than certain limitations imposed by World War II on the locations for filming, the movie remains fairly true to the novel.
The novel is considered to be one of the first, if not the first, fictional depictions of psychotherapy, which is depicted fairly realistically for the time, as Prouty herself spent time in a sanitarium following a mental breakdown in 1925. This was caused by the death of one of her daughters and proved to be a defining period in her professional life as a writer, as the experience she gained from this episode helped her write not only Now, Voyager, but also her 1927 novel Conflict, both of which have similar themes of recovery following a breakdown. Prouty also used this experience to help others in her life who were experiencing mental health issues, including her close friend Sylvia Plath, who was supported both financially and emotionally by Prouty following a suicide attempt in 1953.