"Thanks to Criterion, I could finally see the Max Ophuls movies I’d been reading about for years. The story of Madame de . . . on paper doesn’t really interest me, but in the hands of Ophuls, Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer, and the great Vittorio De Sica (who’s not only a fantastic director and one of the fathers of neorealism, he’s also damn suave), it’s a movie that truly amazed me. I could watch those dancing scenes for hours."

"Another example of magnificent filmmaking, wherein the performances of Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux, and Vittorio De Sica and the direction of Max Ophuls are so perfect that it almost stands alone in a category of romantic European filmmaking. Ophuls’s great fame rests mostly on the extraordinary directorial control he brings to this special film. It seems the most quintessential French film ever made, based on a story by the French Louise de Vilmorin, but it was directed by the German Ophuls. Americans, sensibly enough, never really tried to do this kind of film."