Mandrin is a grandiose and passionate episodic ciné-roman, which benefitted from a script by Feuillade’s number one collaborator, Arthur Bernède and a considerable production budget for the time (700,000 francs). Unlike Rouletabille, the hero of the film is not a purely fictitious character, being based on Louis Mandrin who was born in Saint-Etienne-de-Saint-Geoirs in 1725 and was burnt alive in Valencia at the age of 30. Mandrin, thanks to the complaisant indifference of the gendarmerie, in less than three years managed to upset the French tax system and escape all the soldiers pursuing him. Fescourt turns him into a Robin Hood of the tax system, without diminishing the stature of the character as some recent mediocre films have done. To this authentic and sensational epic, Bernède adds the most delicious elements of melodrama: secret passages, rigged churches etc. […] It’s an early parody of the western that, as a character study, does not reach the psychological sophistication of Les Misérables, but which is representative of the French adventure film permeated with a generous and epic spirit, whose secret has perhaps been lost.

Claude Beyle, Francis Lacassin, “Anthologie du Cinéma”, 3, 1968