Although it was never released in this country, for many British and French critics Lumière d'été stands alongside Children of Paradise as a masterpiece made during the Nazi Occupation of France. Lumière d'été is a study of two worlds: the working class, pictured as healthy and cohesive, and the rich-idle, self–pitying and debauched. A remote mountain inn is the setting for class–crossed love affair, in a melodrama that climbs to a violent climax on tensions built into Jacques Prévert's script and echoed in Grémillon's charged imagery. Michèle (Madeleine Robinson), a beautiful innocent engaged to a dissolute artist (Pierre Brasseur), falls in love with a young construction worker from a nearby dam project (Georges Marchal). She is in turn pursued by an aging playboy (Paul Bernard). French film critic Georges Sadoul writes, "This uneven, but lyrical and courageous, film was banned by the Vichy censors for its polemic (albeit allusive) against the ruling classes. Grémillon allegorically set evil against good (with) mordant humor (that) recalls Renoir's La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game), although Grémillon's own forceful personality had not been influenced by Renoir."