(...) We cannot even criticize the film any more, because, except for the plot, it is nothing, empty, and we could not criticize the emptiness. We can merely note that this emptiness is integral, homogeneous, and continuous during the whole film. (...) Here is the only masterpiece of the History of the Cinema about which we have nothing to say, precisely because he does not say anything, and which would not be a masterpiece any more if we could say something of it, because, then, it would say something. (Moullet sobre Beyond a Reasonable Doubt)

(...) Nothing but appearances, but all in the same movement as their emergence, their birth, their invention: secret of the origin of the cinema, that exists here as though it were, from now on, no longer referring to a secret. But at the same time, our astonishment before it: Franju is at once the one who, through science, rediscovers the secret, and the modern one who knows it’s lost — and, astonishing himself with his power, keeping watch over the secret, affirming it, at last, beyond all doubt.

Jacques Rivette, Cahiers du cinéma nº 149, novembro 1964

Jean-Claude Biette parle lui aussi de son goût pour le style de Tourneur : le murmure des acteurs, l’absence d’effets et le côté intériorisant de la mise en scène, l’inversion des effets par rapport au style hollywoodien classique pour atteindre une vérité intime, et le travail de sape de l’idéologie hollywoodienne du spectacle basé sur le rendement et l’efficacité ; Tourneur prenant le parti du moins contre le plus.