Critics reviews

Even Orson Welles struggled with Kafka. Where Welles' kinetic, expansive style inevitably emphasized the dissonant surreality of Kafka's universe . . . Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's beautifully opaque style works wonders in despectacularizing the rollercoaster-like sensation of hurtling through a Kafkaian world.

Despite its quiet pacing, the film's intensity lends it incredible momentum, engaging the viewer from start to finish.

Class Relations speaks about this time where everything, in a certain manner, ends, but where everything also begins, with a kind of sad insight. Dawn, [François] Moisson says in Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise (and he would know since he's a painter) has nothing enchanting about it; it's cold and the colors are imprecise.

Through Sade, the Straubs add a Marxist slant to Kafka’s book. Through their work on the language, they add a "sadistic" slant on the spectator who, non German-speaking, will not cease reading the subtitles (translated by Danièle Huillet) of Amerika / Klassenverhältnisse.