En rade, produced by Pierre Braunberger, is very different from Rien que les heures. It is pure fiction, and it is not an “experimental” film; but equally it is, as the director pointed out, “a very formal film, in which I made no concessions and in which the story is not at all conventional.” Contemporary critics invoked René Clair, which is absurd, and never dreamed of comparing it with the Swedish cinema, which Cavalcanti so much admired – that cinema which is poetic without ever seeking “to make poetry”. There is perhaps an echo of the great Stiller in this drama of a young man who wanders through a port, dreaming of other places, and who is loved by a young woman dominated by her mother. The rhythm of the film, the images which achieve this (a window pane streaked by drops of rain, a woman’s pensive face), the absence of the superficial formality which characterises so many French films d’auteur of the period, make En rade unique, one of those films which demonstrate the degree of perfection which silent film had achieved in its final period.

Antonio Rodrigues, Alain Marchand, Griffithiana, 60/61, ottobre 1997