Anyone doubting the usefulness of film critics should consider Le Ciel est à vous. This film without famous actors and no marketing would surely have been ignored by the public if it wasn’t for the opinions of some journalists: without any of the usual attractions, it might have suffered the fate of a minor mélo. Thanks to a team of reporters, however, Le Ciel est à vous stirs up as much controversy as Les Visiteurs du soir (The Devil’s Envoys).

Now that the success of Grémillon’s film has been established, one can add criticism amid the praise without remorse. Notwithstanding its impressive qualities, this work is imperfect. The screenplay, despite its style, which will be analyzed later, retains a slight childishness. The subject itself could have been explored more energetically. A hint of roughness as a psychological counterpoint would have provided the drama a tension that it often lacks. Without holding back, it is fair to say that not all actors should have been praised indiscriminately. […]

But the originality of the film resides essentially in the surprising relationship between form and background. It would have been difficult to bring together more exceptional circumstances, draw more often on the emotional stereotypes of the ‘Veillées des Chaumières’, not to mention the ‘Bibliothèque Rose’. Yet, this screenplay, which could have been based on a feuilleton of “l’Écho de la Mode” was actually based on a real event, and the miracle of Grémillon’s art is restoring situations overtaken by moralistic or melodramatic literature to the clean slate of a documentary with its precision, credibility, and excruciating realism. It is not the quantity of tears shed that proves the value of a drama. What counts is the spiritual value associated with them. […] It takes a unique art form to find the original kernel of truth within each stereotype. Grémillon’s art could be commented on at length. He is a director who first applied his filmmaking virtuosity in Lumière d’été, and is able through his mastery in Le Ciel est à vous to achieve the extraordinary concealment of technique. He expresses himself in a visual prose of such perfect honesty and transparency that it escapes our notice. At this level of skill, art disappears completely in its object; we are no longer in a film, but rather in life.

André Bazin, Le Ciel est à vous, “L’Écho des Étudiants”, February 26, 1944