La Petite Marchande d'allumettes represents the first full flowering of a tendency that runs through Renoir's films from 1924 to 1970, a tendency to create an atmosphere of strangeness and unreality, to evoke the quality the French call féerique. Only this one among Renoir's films has that quality throughout; more often, it emerges within a prevailing naturalism to lend a sense of enchantment to a scene. (p. 43)

La Petite Marchande d'allumettes remains at least a lovely fantasy, constructed with delicacy and visual imagination, very nearly maintaining its fairy-tale atmosphere unbroken throughout. (p. 49)

On purge bébé is Renoir's film that comes closest to being a photographed play…. Lines are often spoken with great relish and dramatic flair; we notice the cleverness of a line or the way it is delivered more than its role in the dramatic situation or the interactions it furthers. This dialogue does, of course, characterize...