Pauline Kael

“.... Marsha Mason's chin keeps quivering. Her face is either squinched up to cry or crinkled up to laugh; this may be the bravest, teariest, most crumpled-face performance since the days of Janet Gaynor.... Marsha Mason created a soft, giggly, compliant character in just a few scenes in her first picture, Paul Mazursky's Blume in Love ... But Mason hasn't found her footing in other movies; Herbert Ross overworks her teeth and eyes and charm and pathos ... We're so obviously meant to find her "human" she becomes a charity case.

“Paula, busy picking out white furniture, would be a menace to a serious young actor; this woman loves artists and wants them to function like suburban daddies.... We don't know why [Elliot] loves her until after he wins her, when he says that he fell for her right from the start, as soon as he saw her little snub nose. Of course. That's the shiksa's secret weapon--she wins by a nose….”

Pauline Kael
New Yorker, January 23 ?, 1978
When the Lights Go Down, pp.

Mason has a warm sensuality that's pretty hot.