Ever since cinema has begun to attract large audiences, ever since it has become a spectacle, certain producers and directors have turned their attention quite frequently to the “melo- dramatic” and “romantic-sentimental” genres. (…) Chi è senza peccato… is a part of that series. (…) It is based on Lamartine’s novel Geneviève, histoire d’une servante, a tired piece written by an man crushed by politics, who could no longer find the poetic inspiration he’d held in better times. The film delves into the subject and further accentuates the novel’s worst aspects, heightening the sense of passionate romanticism – in truly poor taste. Young girls seduced by arrogant aristocrats, old wicked countesses, blame and deceit, a great sacrifice and a great love story: all of the materials for a romance dime novel, presented here in the most trite manner – its only goal being to achieve “melodramatic” tension, which no longer has any effect. Yet another film where the characters are puppets and the situations so grotesque and gratuitous that they border on being ridiculous. When confronted with this and hundreds of other similar films I feel it is legitimate and necessary to request a bare minimum of dignity.

Matteo Siniscalco, “Rassegna del film”, n. 14, Roma, maggio 1953