Some prominent critics wrote negative reviews. In his 1941 review for "Sur", Jorge Luis Borges famously called the film "a labyrinth with no center" and predicted that its legacy would be a film "whose historical value is undeniable but which no one cares to see again." "The Argus Weekend Magazine" critic Erle Cox called the film "amazing" but thought that Welles's break with Hollywood traditions was "overdone". "Tatler"s James Agate called it "the well-intentioned, muddled, amateurish thing one expects from high-brows" and "a quite good film which tries to run the psychological essay in harness with your detective thriller, and doesn't quite succeed." Eileen Creelman of "The New York Sun" called it "a cold picture, unemotional, a puzzle rather than a drama". Other people who disliked the film were W. H. Auden and James Agee. After watching the film on January 29, 1942 Kenneth Williams, then aged 15, writing in his first diary curtly described it as "boshey rot", bosh meaning empty or meaningless, nonsense or foolish.