The Radio Times Guide to Science Fiction:

Based on the novel by Robert Merle, Christian de Chalonge's post-nuclear fable opens effectively enough with the residents of a country chateau emerging to inspect the consequences of conflagration. As Jean Penzer's camera roves across the devastated landscape, it's easy to see why Max Douy's production design won a Cesar. But once Michel Serrault and his fellow survivors resume contact with the outside world (in the form of Jean-Louis Trintignant's fascistic forest outlaws), the action descends into predictable melodramatics, which culminate in three of the band breaking out of a government concentration camp to return to their ravaged Utopia. A French language film.