Critics reviews

Late in the film it becomes clear that these daring new interactions are actually fostered by Rouch’s direct intervention into their personal lives, and as such, The Human Pyramid’s often stilted-feeling scenes are transformed into powerful mirror image reflections of the stark awkwardness of nascent, socially-radical intimacies.

It created a template for how a film could conduct a complex internal dialogue using only the terms of its own fascination with beauty, romance, and young bodies. The difference is that it created it to explore a subject that few of the films that followed in its footsteps were ready to address.

With a keen eye for the human side of landscape (a grounded ship and an abandoned villa are virtual characters) and an avid tenderness for his performers, Rouch brings tremulous drama to a long and sinuous pan shot of young lovers leaving a party for a secluded nook—and they hit their spotlights with Hollywood aplomb. A tag ending, shot later on the Champs-Élysées, winks at "Breathless"—which Rouch strongly influenced.

The experimental dimension of the film is of prime interest, but rather than avant-garde, it is an experiment in provoked observation.