“Primarily an actor's film, The Idiot's excellent performances, aided by Charles Spaak's tersely eloquent script, shows considerable depth. Gérard Philipe's cool, restrained performance as Prince Mishkin counterbalances the more theatrical melodramatics of Mlles. Feuillère and Coëdel. Philipe's quiet presence throughout the film gives each scene a strangely ironic distance and disengages him from the stagey romanticism of the women who appear to love and need him, need something which their vain, empty lives do not provide. Christian Matras' cool camerawork and lighting and the bareness of the sets enrich the feeling of loneliness conveyed by the characters. Yet the director evokes sympathy for each of his characters and, by refusing to judge them, gives each of them a unique, uncompromised strength that makes their distance from one another less harsh. James Agee called The Idiot ‘a skillful, sensitive, intense reduction, with beautiful work by Gérard Philipe, Edwige Feuillère, and Lucien Coëdel. The most satisfying version of a Dostoevsky novel that I have seen.'” --Contemporary Films