[1] Critics have focused on The Anxious City's complex composition, disquiet atmosphere and possible origin as a reaction to the German invasion of Belgium.

[5]In 1969, André Fermigier of Le Nouvel Observateur wrote that The Anxious City is Delvaux's masterpiece and highlighted its ambitious composition.

He wrote that it recalls The Massacres of the Triumvirate by Antoine Caron, the depictions of panic in Nicolas Poussin's paintings and "bizarre mythologies of the Renaissance".

[6] Ronny Cohen wrote for Artforum in 1985 that the complex composition turns the figures into symbols through their scale, positions and contrasts between neutrally coloured areas and red and yellow surfaces.

[3] The art historian Virginie Devillers and the critic Eugénie De Keyser interpreted The Anxious City as a reaction to the German invasion of Belgium.

[4][7] De Keyser wrote that it stands out among Delvaux's paintings with its many preparatory studies, where place and people accumulate into an inescapable sense of disquiet.

[7] The literary scholar John Fletcher writes that the painting projects "melancholy, disquiet and bafflement" in a way reminiscent of the novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet, especially Topology of a Phantom City [fr] (1976).

[8] The literary scholar Jeannette Baxter calls The Anxious City a post-apocalyptic work where people seem to be sleepwalking or traumatised.

She writes that the crowded scene combined with a complete lack of eye contact between the figures creates "an overwhelming sense of loneliness".