For seven or eight years now, there has been a strange plot between the author of these words (classified as «leftist»), the MacMahonists in their innocence (labeled as «right wing»), and young cinephiles (even more avid because they’re younger), to establish the name of Vittorio Cottafavi in Paris as a great filmmaker. […] I’m not afraid to say it: if Cottafavi reaches the essence of cinema, it’s because he has understood its discontinuous nature. Perhaps in the entire world, including Bois d’Arcy, there are no more than a hundred sound films in which every scene and every moment is effective and beautiful in itself. Even Messalina, which the author disowned, contains beautiful things, such as the narrowing of the space during the final bloody orgy. […] Emotion is the key to this cinema, in which carelessness is only an appearance, and economy of means is the paradoxical desire for luxury and sensual pleasure (since the Baudelairesque calm is always result of some decisive crisis, even though the endings are often melodramatic or tragic). The intelligence and precision of Cottafavi’s aims furthermore excludes, as far as he is concerned, any resorting to «chance»: if a devil guides him, he is aware of it. The true drama in his films is the Goethean drama, par excellence: «Stop, right this instant, you’re so beautiful!» But secret mutation of quantity in quality requires a certain persistence of the raw material. In the absence of unimaginable «remakes», Cottafavi’s tenacity forces us, despite him and despite ourselves, to limit ourselves simply to memories; and finally the arising of I cento cavalieri!

Gérard Legrand, in «Positif», nn. 100-101, Dec. 1968- Jan. 1969