 Writing for "The Spectator" in 1936, Graham Greene gave the film a good review, describing it as "an honest, interesting and well-made picture".Characterizing Paul Muni as "the greatest living actor" and as a "Protean figure", Greene asserts that Muni's depiction of Pasteur is accomplished "with his whole body [to establish] not only the bourgeois, the elderly, the stubborn and bitter and noble little chemist, but his nationality and even his period.