"Arthur Penn's film is about the Yugoslavian immigrants who came to America in the 1950s; it is a film about the sense of new departures and change that pervaded the 1960s (...); it is a film about a couple that can't seem to join forces because they always expect the wrong thing of life, of the nation, and of each other; it is a film about the American dream, a film about the desire both for non-violence and the wild excesses of violence. Basically, this is a portrait of a country crystallised in the portrait of a single immigrant." (Hellmuth Karasek, Der Spiegel, 29.3.1982).