Reception
The film opened in March 1925 at the Montparnasse cinema in Paris. It was immediately acclaimed as a landmark by critics. It was not however popular with the public and it became a commercial failure. Its critical prestige brought it some distribution abroad, and in Japan in 1926 the press named it as the best European film of the year.
Later assessments have continued to value it for its simple intimacy and emotional poignancy, and for "the unusual authenticity of its natural and social milieu". The opening sequence in particular, depicting a village funeral, and lasting for about 11 minutes, has been admired for the skill of its exposition which combines narrative clarity with social detail and psychological insight. Georges Sadoul regarded Visages d'enfants as one of Feyder's best films; and Jean Mitry in 1973 declared that, apart from the triptych in Gance's Napoléon and Clair's Un chapeau de paille d'Italie, of all the French productions of the 1920s, Visages d'enfants was the one he would choose to save: it was the most consistent, even and balanced, the only one which was still today resolutely modern.
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