"Pattes blanches' principal characters mate film noir archetypes with the stuff that fairy tales are made of. Fernand Ledoux's pathetic middle-aged lecher, oblivious to the infidelities of his inamorata, is a Gallic variation on one of James M. Cain's cuckolded chumps, and Suzy Delair's garishly overripe temptress parades her wares with the deluded aplomb of one who'd spent too many of her formative years watching the collected oeuvre of Viviane Romance. Their spiritual opposites are no less than Cinderella and her Prince Charming, with an unsettling twist-she (Arlette Thomas) is a woebegone hunchback, and he (Paul Bernard) a haunted anachronism...Jean Anouilh's script is a tangled skein of sexual jealousies, intrigues, misalliances, but throughout Pattes Blanches the theme of eros and problems of social caste are so intertwined as to be indivisible. Sex...is the trigger for the underlying tensions of suppressed class antagonisms...in a milieu where social class is destiny..." -Stephen Harvey, The Museum of Modern Art