The first directorial work of Cottafavi was born under the sign of a parnership – perhaps not particularly congenial to him – which established itself in that same year, 1943. This was the partnership De Sica-Zavattini, here actor and writer, currently employed as director and writer on I bambini ci guardano. Adapted from the comedy of the same name by Ugo Betti, the script of I nostri sogni has much of the feeling both of the Zavattini poetic, linked to inter-class paradoxes, and of the gallery De Sica style of street people interpreted by Camerini, who are suddenly called to play a featured role in life. (…) The film is uneven, still far from the style which, apart from the genre and production budget, distinguishes the mature cinema of Cottafavi. But the style is already signaled by various elements, involving the care for atmosphere and the descriptive finesse of some existential situations. (…) We breathe an air of Gozzano, of Monsù Travet, more regretful than mocking, as it would be in the Italian-style comedy. In so far as the film is based, chronologically, in the last glimmerings of the regime, it resists setting out a defence of the working class, morally clean, the soul of fascism, counterpointing the snobbism of the fashionable rich and the somewhat clochard extravagance of the protagonist. But here is also – and it is striking in that it is only hinted – the description of the metropolis which gives work to all, where the publicity for products acquires a social, economic and creative importance.

Marco Vanelli, I nostri sogni, «Ciemme», n. 127, March 1999