Another critic took up the theme of theatricality in identifying the true subject of the film, as well as linking it to the political background: "It is not a portrait of Stavisky, but of the rôle he sought to play. It is not a study of character, but of a performance. It is not an image of reality, but the analysis of an illusion. By starting precisely from these 'false appearances' which Resnais can liken to those of the pre-war political establishment, what he speaks of here is quite simply the death of an era whose false splendours will be lifted, like a curtain in the theatre, upon the outbreak of fascism in Europe and the Second World War."