We will probably never see a truly integral version. In fact, we know that the producer, Morris Ergas, had very bad relations with his director, and re-edited the film against his wishes. Concerned to please his muse, the actress Sandra Milo, Ergas removed everything that concerned the Countess Vitelleschi (Martine Carol), which makes the first third of the film practically incomprehensible, motivated more by the love intrigue than by the political context. (…) Even so, what remains contains enough beautiful things to satisfy the cinephile. First, the great ball scene, during which Vanina dispays her boredom with the unemployed young heir to whom her hysterical father (the astonishing Paolo Stoppa) wants to marry her for his own financial interests; then, the antics of a little courtier quick to scent the wind of History, who is none other than our friend Jean Gruault; the tortures inflicted on presumed terrorists by a tyrannical power, under the benign regard of the compliant clergy; without counting the superb image of Vanina, standing against a shutter, impatient to go in search of Pietro. We have been deprived of all these scenes in the version released in France, (…) [which] reinforces our admiration for this staggering chronicle of two intertwined passions, that of a woman [like Racine’s Phèdre] “completely attached to her prey”, and that of a militant inflamed by his revolutionary ideal. Even the choice of the two main players, which was opposed, is justified: Laurent Terzieff, the dry and inspired intellectual, is in perfect contrast to Sandra Milo, petrified in heavy sensuality. Neither has had finer roles.

Around them moves a gallery of puppets and rogues, motivated by the single desire to keep their privileges. The Princes of the Church are not spared, by a filmmaker who has often been accused of bigotry: the scene of the interview with the Cardinal in itself deserves a place in any anthology, and would not have been disclaimed by Buñuel himself.

Claude Beylie, “Retour à Rossellini,” Cinéma 90, n. 465, March 1990