“Lilian Harvey always looked as if she should try for a comeback, even at the start of her career. Her face, aged early, was routinely given an iron mask of charm, which at moments of consternation betrayed cracks no make-up could conceal. The Ufa directors, whose intention was to launch her not as a vamp or lady, but as ‘the sweetest girl in the world’, allowed this face just one expression: mechanical mirth. Harvey always wanted to float across the floor like a fairy, but her mincing steps were more reminiscent of a wound-up doll […]. Her gestures were sharp, her dance steps drilled, and when, hell bent on captivation, she rushed towards Willy Fritsch, she not so much swung her hips as waved them, like a flag, separated from her body. Lilian Harvey, the eternal dream blonde and darling of fortune, was the perfect synthetic actress, whose human features consistently took on the mechanical aspect of a cartoon figure. It’s no coincidence that she wanted to play the dream role of Mickey Mouse in the grotesque nonsense interlude in Glückskinder (1936)”. (Karsten Witte, Zu schön um wahr zu sein: Lilian Harvey (1977), in Idem, Lachende Erben, toller Tag. Filmkomödie im dritten Reich, 1995)

Julius Berstl had Elisabeth Bergner in mind for his emancipated journalist Gladys O’Halloran – and Lilian Harvey played the role in the film. Ophüls has described her inept acting with great precision (Spiel im Dasein, pp. 138f), gallantly avoiding to mention her name, and claimed that Harvey was simply incapable of translating his directions and suggestions. But this film not only suffers from her. The point of Berstl’s play was that it did not have a happy ending; the journalist Gladys O’Halloran jumps back into the water again, having turned the heads of both Sandercroft and his crew, and the men do not get a look in. Instead of that, the scenarists have thought up an additional silly long drawn out intrigue with a happy ending. Maybe it was the carnival scenes in Nice that made the film so successful at the time, maybe Mische Spoliansky’s music, maybe Margo Lion’s really charming appearance in the harbour pub singing Robert Gilbert’s Leben ohne Liebe kannst du nicht; the critics’ enthusiasm is hard to comprehend. From today’s point of view, the only thing that really seems remarkable is Franz Planer’s camera work. Planer became one of Ophüls’ most important cameramen and was instrumental in developing his specific style. His work in Nie wieder Liebe illustrates that in this film, together with Litvak, he was already pursuing a concept of the moving camera take, and that this obviously influenced Ophüls”. (Helmut G. Asper, Max Ophüls, 1998)