In the context of the French realist movement of the 1930s, which turned its back on colonial mythology and costume fables, Pension Mimosas is arguably the most revelatory film in a body of work that also includes Crainquebille, Thérèse Raquin and Les Gens du voyage. The Italian neo-realists were not mistaken when they included the picture (Pensione Mimosa) among their sources of inspiration alongside certain films by Jean Renoir and, naturally, Marcel Carné, who was Feyder’s assistant during those years and often acknowledged his debt to the director of Les nouveaux messieurs…
Pension Mimosas is an auteur film in the contemporary sense of the term. From a script that could have easily tipped over into melodrama, it’s a production that draws its energy from the authenticity of its situations, the finesse of Charles Spaak’s dialogue, the sensitive analysis of relationships between people on a razor edge between conventional circumstances and the rare subtleties of characters, portrayed in their full complexity. Without the more conspicuous merits of Le grand jeu or a Kermesse héroïque, Pension Mimosas is a subtle work in which Feyder reveals a kind of “classic” refinement, devoid of pathos; the drama knots and unravels like a detailed diagram. This masterpiece of psychological analysis leaves nothing to chance, from the well-calibrated script to the meticulous sets and the restrained performances of the actors. Louise and Pierre run headlong toward their destiny with the madness of a passion that lets nothing get in its way. To frame Pension Mimosas as a story about the hell of gambling would be misleading; if there is a hell here, it is the hell of frustrated love, of impossible love that depends on a situation with no way out. As Charles Spaak has emphasized, Feyder is indeed the “painter of failed destinies”.

Jean A. Gili, Pension Mimosas ou l’absence de hasard dans le jeu des passions, in Jacques Feyder, “1895. Revue d’histoire du cinéma”, Special Edition, 1998