"Caligari" was a critical success in France, but French filmmakers were divided in their opinions after its release. Abel Gance called it "superb" and wrote, "What a lesson to all directors!" and René Clair said it "overthrew the realist dogma" of filmmaking. Film critic and director Louis Delluc said the film has a compelling rhythm: "At first slow, deliberately laborious, it attempts to irritate. Then when the zigzag motifs of the fairground start turning, the pace leaps forward, agitato, accelerando, and leaves off only at the word 'End', as abruptly as a slap in the face." Jean Epstein, however, called it "a prize example of the abuse of décor in the cinema" and said it "represents a grave sickness of cinema". Likewise, Jean Cocteau called it "the first step towards a grave error which consists of flat photography of eccentric decors, instead of obtaining surprise by means of the camera". French critic Frédéric-Philippe Amiguet wrote of the film: "It has the odor of tainted food. It leaves a taste of cinders in the mouth." The Russian director Sergei Eisenstein especially disliked "Caligari", calling it a "combination of silent hysteria, partially coloured canvases, daubed flats, painted faces, and the unnatural broken gestures and action of monstrous chimaeras".