"Huillet and Straub's adaptation of Kafka's Amerika is surprisingly straightforward and faithful to this great writer's last novel. Kafka wanted it to be called The Man Who Disappeared, but the title the filmmakers have given it has a purpose. It is a pointer to their sympathy with recent re-readings of Kafka which concentrate more on his acute social observation rather than the familiar anguish. The resulting film is a combination of the formal, austere qualities of their best work and the minimalist beauty that often results from such a discipline. None of it is in the least difficult to understand, and indeed achieves a rare clarity. It is almost like seeing the novel unfold before one's eyes, with Huillet and Straub encouraging the use of one's imagination as well as making use of Kafka's and their own. Once again, as Richard Roud has said, they have applied an almost cinéma-vérité approach towards a writer's raw material. Yet, like Bresson, while apparently negating the cinema by subordinating it to literature, they renew and enrich it." Derek Malcolm, London Film Festival '84