Variety said "it runs too long". "Something is obviously missing in the French film that has been made from Georges Simenon's weirdly off-beat novel", wrote
Bosley Crowther of
The New York Times. He continued: "There are elements for shattering drama here. Yet, strangely, it doesn't develop. It all moves along in the groove of conventional nonconformance with the obvious social rules." Crowther called Autant-Lara "one of the best directors in France", but wrote that Bardot's performance "falls far short" and that "Jean Gabin misses, too".
François Truffaut called it one of Autant-Lara's best films and compared it to the plays of
Jean Anouilh, noting:We come out of it with a mixture of disgust and admiration, a sense of satisfaction that is real enough but incomplete. It is 100 percent French, with all the virtues and vices that implies: an analysis that is at once subtle and narrow, a skill that is mixed with spitefulness, a spirit of unflinching observation directed at the sordid, and talented sleight-of hand that delivers a liberal message in the end. He described how the film contrasts the scene where Bardot's character robs a backstreet watchmender's shop with the ceremonial on the same day of Queen
Elizabeth II's state visit to Paris:It's the girl who interests us and preoccupies us, not an anachronistic queen. It is precisely because Bardot is a girl who represents her time absolutely faithfully that she is more famous than any queen or princess … And it's why
En Cas des Malheur is her best film since
And God Created Woman — an anti-
Sabrina, anti-
Roman Holiday, anti-
Anastasia movie that is truly republican.
Filmink wrote the film "is famous for a scene where Bardot seduces Gabin by lying against a desk, hiking up her skirt to him… showing the audience her backside and Gabin what was on the other side." ==Box office==