Using the image of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat, the film's title evokes a dissonance between the promise of a global socialist revolution (the grin) and its actual nonexistence.

[1] The title is also a play on words: The original expression in French is "Le fond de l'air est frais[2]", meaning "there is a chill/a nip in the air".

The Prague Spring of 1968 is featured, with footage of a Fidel Castro speech in which he explains his political support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia while questioning the legality of the action.

But as felt in the tempo of the filmmaking, the tide turns in May 1968: A long, less than exciting section on the various strikes and committees of '68 culminates with the pointless attack on the annual theater festival in Avignon."

Hoberman complimented Marker's "genius for poetic aphorism", and concluded, "More impressionistic than analytical, A Grin Without a Cat is a grand immersion.