I am exaggerating a little. The Robe clearly shows how CinemaScope gives weight to everything, even if left to itself. Henry Koster changes shots, regulates the camera movements according to plan, without any significant miscalculation, and still encounters happy accidents, unexpected successes. A thousand details, a thousand tricks that will soon wear thin, are none the less proof that things will not stop there. In the end it will be necessary to embark on the search for a new breadth of expression and attitude; above all, a contemporary breadth of expression which will stand out on this flat backdrop. The director will learn how he can sometimes claim the whole surface of the screen, mobilize it with his own enthusiasm, play a game that is both closed and infinite – or how he can shift the poles of the story to their opposites, create zones of silence, areas of immobility, the provoking hiatus, the skilful break. Quickly wearying of the chandeliers and vases brought into the edges of the image for the ‘balance’ of the close-ups, he will discover the beauty of the void, of free, open spaces swept by the wind; he will know how to lay bare the image, how to be no longer afraid of gaps or disequilibrium, and how to multiply his transgressions against plasticity in order to obey the truths of the cinema.

Jacques Rivette, in “Cahiers du cinéma”, n. 31, 1954 (translated by Liz Heron. Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1950s, ed. Jim Hillier)