While Robinson said the response from American critics was largely positive and enthusiastic, Kaes said American critics and audiences were divided: some praised its artistic value and others, particularly those distrustful of Germany following World War I, wished to ban it altogether. Some in the Hollywood film industry felt threatened by the potential rivalry and spoke out against "Caligari"'s release, condemning it as a "foreign invasion". Nevertheless, the film remained popular in the United States. Several American reviewers compared it to an Edgar Allan Poe story, including in a 1921 review in "Variety" magazine, which praised the direction and "perfect tempo" of the film, as well as the sets that "squeeze and turn and adjust the eye, and through the eye the mentality". A "New York Times" review likened it to modernist art, comparing the film's sets to Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2", and said the film "gives dimensions and meaning to shape, making it an active part of the story, instead of merely the conventional and inert background", which was key to the film's "importance as a work of cinematography". Albert Lewin, a critic who eventually became a film director and screenwriter, called "Caligari" "the only serious picture, exhibited in America so far, that in anything like the same degree has the authentic thrills and shock of art". A story in a November 1921 edition of "Exceptional Photoplays", an independent publication issued by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, said it "occupies the position of unique artistic merit", and said American films in comparison looked like they were made for "a group of defective adults at the nine-year-old level".