The film received mixed reviews when first released, but its reputation has grown over the years. In a 1961 article in Kulchur and later reprinted in her first book, Pauline Kael praised the movie's performances and its “sensuous camerawork,” “extraordinary romantic atmosphere,” and “polished, epigrammatic dialogue.” The film was revived in England in 1979, where it was rediscovered as a masterpiece. Derek Malcolm called it "a supreme piece of film-making which hardly puts a foot wrong for 2 hours...a magnificent and utterly timeless dissection of passion and affection, the game of life and love itself." Lindsay Anderson criticized the film, stating "the camera is never still; every shot has the tension of a conjuring trick. The sleight of hand is dazzling, but fatally distracting...With a supple, ingenious, glittering flow of images that is aesthetically the diametric opposite of Mme. de Vilmorin's chaste prose, he has made the film an excuse for a succession of rich, decorative displays...In all this visual "frou-frou" it is not surprising that the characters become lost and the interior development of the drama is almost completely unobserved." François Truffaut wrote that the film was very similar to Ophüls' earlier film "Liebelei", stating that "the last half hour, the duel and the finale, is a remake pure and simple." Jacques Rivette praised the film, calling it "a difficult work, in the fullest sense of the word, even in its writing, one in which everything aims to disconcert, distract the viewer from what is essential through the accumulation of secondary actions, wrong turns, repetitions and delays; a work in which the picturesque tries hard to conceal the pathetic."