Critic Reviews

Production of this picture in England endowed it with a rich, distinctive air. It is a grand picture, told in what Sir Walter himself called his "big bow-wow style."

The dialogue and script are fatuously Americanised from Scott's original, but these chivalric Hollywood sagas still have a strange poetic quality about them, perhaps partly because of the way they unscrupulously and inaccurately ransacked literature and history for ideas and images.

Ivanhoe is a great romantic adventure, mounted extravagantly, crammed with action, and emerges as a spectacular feast.

Luxe MGM historical ransacking, locationed to the nines, beautiful to look upon, but with energy lapses in the soggy script of Sir Walter Scott's epic classic.

No one could say this wasn't a rousing movie. It's also romantic, big, commercial, and slick, in the M-G-M grand manner.

Best of a series of lavishly mounted MGM historical yarns made in England in the early 1950s with American stars and British supporting casts. [03 Jun 2012, p.46]