"The most important film since Citizen Kane" proclaimed David Thomson, who is not usually given to hyperbole. Rivette authority Jonathan Rosenbaum counts Celine and Julie among his favourite films, calling it "scary, evocative, exhilarating and essential." Julie (Dominique Labourier), a librarian, and Celine (Juliet Berto), a magician, meet in Montmartre and stumble upon a haunted house, in which they soon find themselves involved in a ghostly Gothic melodrama. Rivette's fun-house approach to narrative fills the film's more than three hours with one astonishment after another; among the film's myriad pleasures are the many references and homages Rivette makes to the works of authors and directors he loves (including Minnelli, James, Cocteau, Sterne, Proust, Hitchcock and Mizoguchi). Imperative for cinephiles, Celine and Julie "is for my money, the best film to emerge from the post-New Wave era, and remains one of the most brilliant (and entertaining) films ever made" (Saul Austerlitz, Senses of Cinema).