Robert Benayoun, Resnais's commentator and friend, writing some years later, felt that his intentions in the film had been widely misunderstood, especially by those who looked for a politically engaged analysis of a crucial period in French history and found instead a retreat into nostalgia. For Benayoun, Resnais had seen in Stavisky a Faustian archetype, haunted by visions of his oncoming death, who fights to hold on to his 'empire' ("Alexander the Great"), resorting to every kind of illusion and delusion to gain more time for himself. The kaleidoscopic method of the narrative, its theatricality and romanticism provided the director with exactly the tools to represent the dazzling and elusive career of this "sublime crook". He concluded that "Stavisky" was perhaps one of the films in which Resnais had engaged himself most personally.