 In "The New Yorker" David Denby called Schygulla "an improbable cross between Dietrich and Harlow".Schygulla, too, was the runner-up for the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress that year, losing to Sally Field for Norma Rae.François Truffaut commented in 1980 in the "Cahiers du cinéma" that with this film Fassbinder "has broken out of the ivory tower of the cinephiles", and that the film is "an original work of epic and poetic qualities" influenced by Godard's "Contempt", Brecht, Wedekind and Douglas Sirk and particularly touching is his idea of a man who looks on men and on women with equal fondness.