Review of The Robe (1953) by Jonathan B — 07 Jul 2014

It is Jay Robinson's lunatic performance as Caligula that prevents this turgid Biblical story from being worse than it actually is. His is the stand out performance by a huge margin despite the cast of big Hollywood stars.

Robinson earns every cent of his fee and leaves a fantastic legacy of just how a maniac should be played in 1950s movie. Richard Burton as the the Roman soldier who wins Christ's robe while playing dice at the foot of the crucifixion is simply dreadful, acting like some old thespian has-been in and Bridlington am dram society.

He could hardly portray less genuine emotion if he were to read the list of ingredients from the back of a packet of Cornflakes. Jean Simmons is annoyingly weak as his childhood sweetheart and Victor Mature looks as though his face has set solid while trying to pass a particularly hard stool throughout the movie.

There's far, far too much earnest staring into the middle distance in order to attempt to convey some kind of religious fervour and Burton's attempts at acting 'deranged' seems to consist solely of panting for breath while holding his head in his hand.

Henry Koster makes for a clumsy and lazy director and everything looks too flat and dull. Maybe he was just so carried away by the size of the image created with the new CinemaScope lenses that he actually forgot to think about what was actually going on.

Definitely not the best of this era or genre.