If its spectacular, formal use of 70-millimeter has none of the sense of the new to be found in such superior big-screen blockbusters as Tati's Playtime and Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey... it still marks a major step forward for the ambitious personal epic compared to such preceding examples of the period as Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Exodus, Nicholas Ray's King of Kings, and Lean's own The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
March 24, 1989