“There's more than half a title in common with America's greatest tear-jerker. Love has taken Budapest by storm, its heroine dies and no one can expect to emerge from the film dry-eyed. But there the similarities end--for here the heroine is 70, and is played by an extraordinary old lady, Lili Darvas, widow of playwright Ferenc Molnár, who acted with Max Reinhardt. She plays a bedridden mother whose last days are comforted by a daughter-in-law who persuades her that her son is a famous director in America. In reality he's a political prisoner--this in 1953--and the tension develops from the old woman's need to be deceived and her daughter-in-law's waning ability to maintain the mask.” --“New Hungarian Cinema,” PFA Publication