“The merry-go-round of obsessions has changed from Durrell's colors to Cukor's”--Philip Strick, Sight & Sound.
Anouk Aimee, Anna Karina and Dirk Bogarde are featured in this George Cukor film portrait of the mythic city that has “come to terms with obscenity,” as it is characterized in the “Alexandria Quartet.” Among the film's few champions on its release was N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby, who declined the obvious comparison with Durrell's passionate opulence and went right to the issue at hand: Cukor's Hollywood artifice. Canby writes,
“...Cukor is a movie-maker of great wit, taste and unpretentious sophistication. That is, the luxurious surfaces of his movies, his best movies, are what they are, and this becomes, in some strange way, a kind of cinematic equivalent to Durrell's luxuriously written prose. As a friend of mine describes it, Justine (made in 1969) is one of the most beautiful 1930s movies ever made.... Cukor has created his own kind of stylish, movie masquerade.”