The critics are split, and the split runs along the calendar. Almost everyone agrees the film is a spectacle first: the CinemaScope frame, the sets for Rome and Jerusalem, and the sheer size of the pageantry draw praise from the warmest and the coldest reviews alike. The notices from its original release find the performances consistently good, with Jean Simmons, Richard Burton and Victor Mature singled out, and treat the scale as an achievement in its own right.
Later critics see something else. Empire calls it pompous schlock, and Time Out and Collider find the direction turgid, the dialogue creaky and the whole thing preachy and slow, of interest mainly as the first CinemaScope production. Even The New Yorker, writing in 1953, complains that some scenes take far too long to end. The spread is wide, from 90 down to 20, and the pattern is plain: the closer a critic sits to 1953, the more the spectacle covers for the rest.