Curiously enough, Les Aventures de Robert Macaire, which is never spoken about, is a classic. […] This twenty reel film contains no prolixity, not a flaw. An entire era with its romantic atmosphere is reproduced. It’s lively and refined, and it is both spiritually and stylistically more modern than many current films. There will no doubt be those who say Epstein was averse to the film. But is that so certain? It’s possible that he gave it no importance. In any case, he wouldn’t have shot Mauprat right afterwards and so quickly if he hadn’t made Macaire. Some may shrug their shoulders saying that the film is the Le Caprice de Caroline chérie of the era. I’m sorry for them and for Caroline too, but if a comparison were to be made and an equivalent sought out from our time, it would have to be High Noon, and that’s a difference in perfection! I know of no other work by Epstein more authentic than Les Aventures de Robert Macaire. He dedicated himself to this film in complete honesty. He knew his romantics, his boulevard du crime, his Frédéric Lemaître, his Dumas, his Sand and his Doré. With his choice of landscapes, the realness of the secondary characters, Mercier’s refined interiors, all the details and even with false naiveté and a sort of false comicality, he plunges us into the spirit of that time.

Henri Langlois, “Jean Epstein”, Cahiers du cinéma, n. 24, 1953