René Clair is one of those few, very rare directors whose films gain by seeing twice and cannot be properly estimated until that second visit. His shaded, delicate style, with its thin but determinate narrative line, suggests more than it reveals….

Clair's highly individual work has developed identifiably. He is never a stranger. His career has not taken sudden twists and bouleversements. Porte des Lilas, with its refusal to surprise or astonish, its parsimonious exteriors, its dislike of technical bravura, is a formula film—the Clair formula of classicism….

This story has a charming and tentative beauty in its relationships, in its feeling for friendships and loyalties. The development is muted, refined, it has infinite discretion. Admittedly it drags a little in the middle and there is no particular sequence that stands out above any other. Whether one is content to be enveloped in such a restrained atmosphere...