A Masterpiece!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Spartacus and Ben-Hur this ain't. I don't understand the references to "lavish spectacle." Everything in this movie looks cheap. And director Stanley Fleisher is no Bill Kowalchuk (Ben-Hur) or Stanley Kramer (Spartacus). As far as the score, Mario Nascimbene is no Miklos Rozsa either. As far as the red/orange tint referred to I strongly suspect this is due to the aging of the print. The movie has not been restored like others of its day, which is understandable; it's not worth restoring. Anthony Quinn and his colleagues do the best they can with a ponderously leaden and clichéd script ("Work, you crazy dogs!"). The pacing is glacial, and the long passages of monologue that are more appropriate to a pulpit than a soundstage are tough to take. I was going to stop watching halfway through but I forced myself to watch the whole thing so I'd feel qualified to comment on it. Just because I suffered doesn't mean you have to.

Pontius Pilate releases the violent criminal Barabbas (Anthony Quinn) instead of Jesus. Barabbas returns to his drunken friends to find his lover Rachel (Silvana Mangano) has become one of Jesus' follower. He goes blind for awhile as Jesus is crucified. Rachel gets stoned to death for blasphemy. Barabbas is arrested again for robbing a temple caravan but Pilate tells him that he is not allowed to sentence him to death again. Instead he is sentenced to the sulfur mines in Sicily. He is chained to a Christian Sahak but he still refuses to believe in Christ. After many years, they are brought to Rome and become gladiators under the famous champion Torvald (Jack Palance).Nobody can claim that the film went cheap on the production. This is a big scale movie of Old Hollywood. The acting is very broad at times. I really didn't like the constant referencing to Jesus in the first half. It becomes too much when he meets Lazarus and the Disciples. Rachel and Sahak are much better conduits for the message. I do like the sulfur mines as a substitute for hell. I would have liked him to find salvation down in the mines. It would be poetic and make the movie shorter.

While at first you could possibly be forgiven for thinking Barabbas might look like a cheap Italian epic, it is far, far from being so. The person I saw it with described it as a sword a sandal epic with some religion thrown in to cash in on the genre. If you also thought so, then maybe you need to look again. This has to be one of the most literate screenplays given to a 'Biblical' (yet non-Biblical epic). Bristol born Sceenwriter Christopher Fry, regarded by many as the Shakespeare of the 20th Century, has crafted a perceptive adaptation of Swedish Nobel Prize winner Par Lagerkvists' novel of the same name. The film wreaks of stunning atmosphere. Striking images created by award nominated Cinematographer Aldo Tonti conjure up the best art of the dark age masters. Pay special attention to the Crucifiction scenes, these were filmed during an actual eclipse of the Sun, as it occurred on 15th Feb 1961! The production design by Mario Chiari was also award nominated, and deservedly so, leaving you gasping for air amid astoundingly realistic sets. The National Board of Review awarded Barabbas the Best Foreign Film of it's year.Mario Nascimbene caps the eerie moods with an innovative haunting music score. While the action scenes are violent in their recreation, they serve to force us to realize the shocking inhumanity of the Roman Arena, a severe denouncement of the repugnant, decay riddled Roman Empire. Anthony Quinn, Vitorio Gassman, Harry Andrews, Silvana Mangano, Ernest Borgnine, et-all, give convincing performances that should sweep the discerning viewer along a tour de force journey. Jack Palance is truly menacing in a larger than life performance as the arena's maniacal killer. While it's mostly impossible to fully translate a novel into a screen play, it seems Fry has worked hard to keep much of the poetic prose of Lagerkvists' 50's original intact.American Director Richard Fleischer (son of famous animator Max) demonstrates full command of this difficult project and infuses it with the same intensity he imparted to several of his other gripping works: Compulsion '59 ~ 10 Rillington Place '71 ~ The New Centurians '72 and Edward G. Robinson's impressive 'swan song' Soylent Green in '73. If you can patiently follow as a tortured soul journeys into self discovery, then you should be rewarded by the experience of Barabbas. Recommended for the viewer who can 'read' a film like a book. It seems Columbia have recently re-mastered this film on DVD, I look forward to seeing it.

***SPOILERS*** The film "Barabbas" starts where the New Testament left off with petty thief bandit and womanizer Barabbas, Anthony Quinn, having his life speared by Roman Mayor of Jerusalem Pontius Pilate, Arthur Kennedy.This was done as a as a good will jester by Pilate to placate the angry crowd,mostly members of the Pharisees, that wanted the other person scheduled to be crucified the innocent Jesus of Nazareth, Roy Mangano,to be executed instead. It's from that point on without of the holy scriptures that were treated to what happened to Barabbas since his escape from death. And we soon see he was more or less the same nasty uncouth and unfeeling person as he was up until then.In fact Barabbas was infuriated when he found out that his girlfriend Rachael, Silvana Mangano, had become a Christian and follower of Jesus! The very man that was crucified in his place! This had Barabbas try to find out what exactly this new religion was all about by getting in touch with some of Jesus' disciples hiding out in Jerusalem ! Finding out that Christianity has to do with loving not only your neighbor but enemy as well had the very disappointed Barabbas go back to his old ways of womanizing robbing as well as murdering which he felt quite at home with. Captured and sentenced to work in the Sicilian sulfur pits for life had,since having his life speared by Pontius Pilate prevented him for any future execution, Barabbas finally finds God with the help of fellow prisoner newly converted Christian Sahak, Vittorio Gassman, just to be able to survive his ordeal. Later released from the pits, together with Sahak, for good behavior a what looked like in his 60's Barabbas was recruited by the Roman Emperor Nero to fight in the Colosseum as a gladiator against men young enough to his sons or even grandsons! It's when Sahak refused to denounce his Christian faith and was executed for doing it that a sudden change of heart came into Barabbas head and he himself accepted Jesus' teachings and became a Christian. Still Barabbas had some unfinished business to take care of by battling the head of the gladiator Torvald (Jack Palance), who killed his good friend Sahak, in a fight to the death at the Roman Colosseum. Being a lot more formidable then Trovald thought he was the haggard and out of shape looking Barabbas made short order of him by using his head and outmaneuvering and outsmarting Torvald at his own game! Trovald who was so sure of himself in him winning the "death match" against Barabbas that he got himself good and gloriously drunk before the festivities even began and kept on drinking in his early matches, that he won hands down, and even during during his battle with Barabbas when he could barley stand on his feet!***SPOILERS*** Now a free man and what he thought practicing Christian Barabbas later makes the fatal mistake of eagerly taking the blame for setting Rome on fire when he sees thousands of Romans fleeing the city. Thinking that was what his fellow Christians, who were totally non violent even to their abusive Roman masters, wanted he ended up where we first saw him nailed to a cross for what in this case turned out to be a crime that he didn't commit! It was the mad as a hatter Emperor Nero who set the city on fire not the luckless and confused,in him thinking he was doing the right thing, Barabbas! With all the breaks Barabbas got throughout the movie he never realized that his life was speared for a reason. That was to give him a second chance in life by becoming a decent God fearing law abiding and and honest human being. Instead Barabbas who has a cross to bare in his new life resorted back to his old and evil ways that put him right back to square one, nailed to the cross, where we last see him as the film finally ends.