When this film was released, as The Greatest Love, in New York in 1954, Bosley Crowther, New York Times Film Reviewer, greeted it with these words: “a dismal and dolorous account of the frustrations of a socially distinguished young matron in finding an outlet for her urge to do good....”
In Europe, Europe 51 was passionately defended by the young critics of Cahiers du Cinema and even the communist film historian Georges Sadoul had good words to say about this quintessentially Christian film in his “Dictionary of Films”:
“The opening sequence showing the society lady receiving her guests for a dinner that is suddenly interrupted by her son's suicide, is depicted in a marvelously Stendhalian manner, supple and concise. Later, the film is bogged-down by the over-obvious thesis. Nevertheless, it does convey the sense of being the profound and sincere diary of an artist confused by the state of the world around him.”