Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

denis888 I love Chralton Heston's roles. He was the very essence of a masculine, clever, smart, superb actor who could perform almost every role he got his hands to. He was absolutely mesmerizing as Moses in Ten Commandments, he was good in many other movies. Here he is not bad, to be honest, the thing is he cannot save this plodding dud of a film from mediocrity that it slowly plunges to in a course of endless 3 hours. The plot seems to be very trite and smacks more of a Shazam Orient Fables than that of a real history. Another big (I mean it B/I/G) mistake was Sophia Loren as a main female part. She is a fish out of her element here completely. The poses, the looks, the smiles, the faked sufferings all betray lack of depth and lack of genuine feeling. She is not even that attractive to be cool just for her looks. To sum it up, this is a rather middle-of-the-road effort, with all the mistakes and prolonged scenes that add more to drag and help not to develop.

hou-3 I'm a medieval historian by profession and I think the feelings of most medievalists about El Cid are bound to be mixed. Of course it's a terrific epic and they make effective use of medieval locations - Peniscola, standing in for Valencia, looks sensational. There's also some excellent, genuinely late 11th-c stone sculpture and bronze doors. But the clothing and armour are late medieval and the depiction of attitudes, whether religious or political, is sadly all over the place. War lord, made a few years later and also starring Heston, gets much closer to the real eleventh century than El Cid manages to do. Quite apart from authenticity, my feelings are ambivalent. The music is gorgeous and the battle scenes - all done with real people - are exciting. But the love story draaags and the plot line is too discursive. Also, El Cid himself just doesn't seem real. The shape of his career is never explained properly. Curiously enough, a much more realistic film could be made in these more cynical times about the adventurer/mercenary soldier that the Cid actually was. It would be a good film too! But it would be very different from this classic, and the thousands of extras wouldn't be there. At the end of the day I can forgive the longeurs of the film for two standout moments that never fail to thrill: the opening of the barn door and the moving acclaim the Cid gets from the hundreds of followers who have been waiting silently for him to appear, and of course the unforgettable last minutes.

piverba I loved it now as well as I loved it first time, when I saw it in the early sixties. Maybe more. It is an epic, perhaps not very accurate historically, still appealing. You see interesting director's solutions, attention to details. Heston and Loren are gorgeous and inspiring. Mass scenes would be quite cost prohibitive nowadays and be substituted by animations. Yes, it is long. But somehow I do not get tired. The dialogs, the music, the costumes, the scenery, the makeup - they used to take their time to do all of these things back in the day. I think El Cid can hold its own against any contemporary epic, without an exception.

James Hitchcock Historical epics were a popular genre in the fifties and early sixties, and the idea of basing one on Spanish history may have been prompted by the fact that many such films, although ostensibly set elsewhere, had actually been shot in Spain. "El Cid" is the story of the 11th century Castilian knight Don Rodrigo Díaz de Bivar, known as El Cid from the Arabic word for "Lord". It does, however, take some liberties with history, and some details are taken from two literary sources, the Spanish epic poem "El Cantar de Mio Cid" and Pierre Corneille's play "Le Cid". An example of Corneille's influence is the fact that the hero's wife Ximena (Jimena in modern spelling) is referred to throughout by the French form "Chimene".The plot is a complex one, involving several intertwined sub-plots. The first deals with Rodrigo's courtship of, and eventual marriage to, the lovely Chimene, a courtship made more difficult by the fact that he has been forced to fight a duel with, and to kill, her father in defence of his family honour. The second deals with Rodrigo's equally difficult relationship with his Royal masters, the Kings Ferdinand I, Sancho II and Alfonso VI of Castile. He remains loyal to the Crown even in the face of severe provocation, particularly from Alfonso who in this version of history is portrayed as a weak, treacherous and cowardly individual who seizes the crown by conniving at the murder of his elder brother Sancho. (Alfonso is known in Spain as "Alfonso the Valiant", which might suggest that the film's version of history is not the universally accepted one).The film's third theme is El Cid's defence of Spain against invasion by the Moorish Almoravid dynasty from North Africa. In this endeavour he has some unlikely allies, namely Spain's own Moorish rulers, who have as much to lose from the invasion as their Christian neighbours. This idea of Christians and Muslims fighting together against a common foe might seem like a romanticised one deriving from twentieth-century notions of political correctness, but in fact it is historically accurate, as the Almoravids did indeed invade Spain with the avowed aim of overthrowing the Emirs of Al-Andalus, whom they accused of following a heterodox form of Islam. Rodrigo is presented in the film as an apostle of religious toleration; his duel with Chimene's father arises after he spares the life of two Muslim Emirs in defiance of a Royal command that all captured Moors are to be slaughtered.More than any other actor, Charlton Heston has become identified with the epic style of film-making. It was a genre in which he excelled; he starred in three of what I regard as the four greatest epics ever made ("The Ten Commandments", "Ben-Hur" and "El Cid", with the fourth being Kubrick's "Spartacus", starring Kirk Douglas). Here he gives one of his finest performances. The script shows Rodrigo as a noble, idealised figure- courageous, loyal, generous to his friends, steadfast in love- yet as portrayed by Heston he remains a warm, living, breathing and recognisably human figure, unlike some idealised characters who resemble nothing so much as a cold, impossibly perfect white marble statue. The other outstanding performance, a chilling mixture of treachery and seductiveness, comes from the French actress Geneviève Page as Doña Urraca, the sister of Sancho and Alfonso and Chimene's rival for Rodrigo's love.There are, admittedly, one or two flaws, mostly connected with the plot line. It is never, for instance, explained why Rodrigo should seek to rescue Alfonso from the imprisonment which seems a just punishment for a man who has attempted to kill his brother and usurp the throne. Chimene appears to remain the same age throughout, unlike her husband who ages visibly in the course of a storyline spanning more than thirty years. (According to one account, this was due to the vanity of Sophia Loren, who did not want to play an older woman, something which might also explain why Rodrigo's daughters Sol and Elvira only appear as young children, even though in the "Cantar de Mio Cid" they are adults and their marriages play an important part in the story).Those, however, are minor matters. Heston expressed the view that the film would have been a better one had it been directed by William Wyler rather than Anthony Mann. That question cannot be proved either way; both men were great directors, and the film we actually have is a fine one, able to stand comparison with Wyler's own "Ben-Hur". The film is one of the grandest and noblest of the epics; it is sumptuous in its recreation of the splendours of mediaeval courtly life, and there are plenty of exciting moments, especially in the battle scenes. It is, however, more than just mere spectacle. It has a humane and intelligent script, and a particularly moving conclusion. It is perhaps the greatest-ever film about the Age of Chivalry, beating all the various versions of the Arthurian Legend. 9/10