Film Forum

U.S., 1961
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Starring Anthony Quinn, Silvana Mangano, Arthur Kennedy, Katy Jurado
Approx. 137 min. 

“Anthony Quinn has tremendous reserves of power in this offbeat Biblical epic about the violent bandit who, on the brink of execution, is freed in place of Jesus and spends the rest of his life wondering why fate intertwined him with the Messiah. As this clenched, volatile character, Quinn projects an aura at once weary and wary; his ornery dignity gives Barabbas’s pattern of making every wrong move yet still approaching redemption the immediacy of a modern antihero’s odyssey. And, under Richard Fleischer’s direction, the cinematographer, Aldo Tonti, and the production designer, Mario Chiari, imbue the imagery with a mournful grandeur, doing imaginative work both in the terse, expressionistic renderings of torture and crucifixion and in the spectacular gladiator sequences, which rival the ones in “Spartacus.” Jack Palance plays the man to beat in the Roman games—the Colosseum proves the rare arena vast enough to contain his gloating laughter.” – Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

Reviews

“The scenes in the Rome gladiatorial pit, sharply etched by Jack Palance as the top boy, have an urgent excitement, with Palance’s sadism matched only by Quinn’s bewildered concentration.”
– Variety

“Mr. Quinn is a sensational sufferer. He grunts and sweats and strains with more credible vengeance and exertion than any actor we can name.”
– The New York Times