Jonathan Rosenbaum called it Mizoguchi's greatest film and praised his "refusal to use close-ups…the theme of female sacrifice that informs most of his major works is given a singular resonance and complexity here." Derek Adams of "Time Out" called it "a heartbreaker to end them all" and praised its cinematography. Richard Brody called it "one of the cinema’s great outpourings of imaginative energy." Noel Burch called it "one of his most deeply ‘feminist’ films" and Tony Rayns called it "the peak of Mizoguchi's art."