Release and Reception
The Greatest Story Ever Told premiered on 15 February 1965 at the Warner Cinerama Theatre in New York City. Critical reaction was divided. In its favor, Variety called the film "a big, powerful moving picture demonstrating vast cinematic resource." The Hollywood Reporter stated: "George Stevens has created a novel, reverent and important film with his view of this crucial event in the history of mankind."
However, Bosley Crowther in The New York Times wrote: "The most distracting nonsense is the pop-up of familiar faces in so-called cameo roles, jarring the illusion." Shana Alexander in Life Magazine stated: "The pace was so stupefying that I felt not uplifted – but sandbagged!" And John Simon – later notorious as the frequently scathing theater and film critic of New York Magazine – wrote in the National Review: "God is unlucky in The Greatest Story Ever Told. His only begotten son turns out to be a bore." Bruce Williamson, in Playboy Magazine, likewise called the movie "a big windy bore."
Brendan Gill wrote in The New Yorker:
- If the subject matter weren't sacred in the original, we would be responding to the picture in the most charitable way possible by laughing at it from start to finish; this Christian mercy being denied us, we can only sit and sullenly marvel at the energy for which, for more than four hours, the note of serene vulgarity is triumphantly sustained.
Stevens told a New York Times interviewer: "I have tremendous satisfaction that the job has been done – to its completion – the way I wanted it done; the way I know it should have been done. It belongs to the audiences now…and I prefer to let them judge." Reviews to the film continue to be mixed, as it currently holds a 37 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 19 reviews.
The original running time was 4 hr 20 min. The time was revised three times, to 3 hr 58 min; to 3 hr 17 min for in the United Kingdom, and then 2 hr 17 min for general U.S. release. Commercially, the film was not successful (by 1983 it had grossed less than $8 million, perhaps 17 percent of the amount required to break even), and its inability to connect with audiences discouraged production of Biblical epics for years.
The Greatest Story Ever Told was nominated for five Academy Awards:
- Best Musical Score
- Best Cinematography (color)
- Art Direction (color) (Richard Day, William J. Creber, David S. Hall (posthumous nomination), Ray Moyer, Fred M. MacLean, Norman Rockett)
- Costume Design (color)
- Special Visual Effects
For the 2001 DVD release, a 3 hr 19 min version was presented along with a documentary called He Walks With Beauty, which detailed the film’s tumultuous production history. Its Blu-ray release appeared in 2011.
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