Since the rise of DVD, the entertainment media has made a fuss over the declining profitability of theatrical exhibition. According to any number of articles on the subject, the increased quality of home viewing has resulted fewer people leaving the house to spend their entertainment dollar. But whether or not this is actually the case, any student of film history can tell you that this is hardly the first time Hollywood has faced this kind of crisis. After all, with the advent of television in the 1950s, Hollywood found themselves having to get creative in order to make money with their movies. In order to compete with television, the studios decided to give viewers what they couldn’t get on their televisions, and the best way to do this was to make their movies big. A number of large-format processes resulted from the period- Cinerama, VistaVision, and the like. Fox’s new format was CinemaScope, and the first film released in this process was 1953’s The Robe.
What made The Robe a hit? Well, CinemaScope certainly had a lot to do with it. The ‘Scope screen was huge, but unlike other new formats such as Cinerama, CinemaScope only required one projector, making it a good deal viable and easier to operate for most theatres. A good number of theatres upgraded to CinemaScope, but even those that didn’t were still able to play the film, as the studio took care to shoot the movie in standard spherical format as well.
But regardless of the shape of the screen, audiences took to The Robe in a big way. Biblical epics were very much in vogue during the early 1950s, not least because the biblical source material made them much easier to swallow for the Breen Office, still Hollywood’s arbiters for onscreen morality. Likewise, audiences responded not only to the lavish sets and costumes, but also to the larger-than-life heroes and villains, uncomplicated morality, and grandiose re-enactments of the stories they’d heard all their lives but hadn’t seen come alive onscreen before. The Robe had all these elements, and combined with the novelty of CinemaScope, the film became the second-biggest hit of 1953, putting millions of dollars in Fox’s coffers and CinemaScope on the map.
What happened? There are certain movie genres that remain popular over time and others who fall out of fashion, and Biblical epics fell into the latter category. No matter how ambitious the films were, they were also almost invariably marked by a tendency toward hamfisted dialogue and storytelling, as well as overripe performances. As the 1950s continued, Biblical epics became simultaneously more expensive and less profitable, and while the genre still produced the occasional hit- most notably The Ten Commandments- for the most part viewers had moved on to other genres. And unlike many other genres, the Biblical epic has yet to come back into fashion or undergo a critical resurgence, perhaps because nowadays we prefer our epics without all that pesky moralizing. But whatever the reason, The Robe is remembered today almost entirely for its status as the first CinemaScope release, rather than for its own merits as a film.
Does The Robe still work? Not really. To begin with, the film’s story isn’t especially compelling. The Robe was based on a bestselling novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, but while Douglas’ work had a great deal of appeal for readers, his storytelling was fairly prosaic. Like a number of other films of its kind, The Robe tells the story of Christ through a peripheral figure, this time the Roman centurian Marcellus Gallio (played by Richard Burton) who is present at the Crucifixion and wins Christ’s robe in a game of dice. But after Christ’s death, Marcellus begins to imagine that the Robe is cursed and soon embarks on a mission to discover the secret of the Robe, only to fall in with Christ’s followers. You can imagine where it goes from there- Marcellus begins to believe, he returns to Rome to spread the good news, and ends up becoming a martyr. Not much of a story, that’s for sure.
Of course, Burton’s presence in the lead role makes it easier to take. Long one of my favorite actors, Burton supposedly considered The Robe one of his worst films, 
but while this is hardly a top-notch Burton performance, it’s always a pleasure to watch him onscreen and savor his amazing voice. Most of the supporting cast can’t measure up- Victor Mature mostly counts on his beefcake physique to carry his performance, Jean Simmons is pretty but little else as Burton’s love interest, and Michael Rennie’s Peter is defined almost entirely by his rockin’ beard. The only secondary player to make much of an impression is Jay Robinson. Robinson’s take on Caligula isn’t in the same league as John Hurt’s in I, Claudius, but he’s still fun to watch, especially when he’s yelling out orders with hammy relish. It’s a campy performance, but it’s better than we get from most of his costars.
Strangely, it’s this lack of campiness that may have contributed to The Robe’s loss of popularity. The Biblical epic is traditionally one of the most campiest of genres, and in particular the saints’n’sinners epics of Cecil B. DeMille can still be enjoyed for their cheeseball value. By contrast, director Henry Koster was a skilled craftsman, but lacked DeMille’s flair for shameless entertainment, and consequently The Robe is too straight and respectable to work in the same way as DeMille’s films. Aside from Robinson’s scenes and Burton’s bits of Robe-inspired madness, there’s not much fun to be had while watching the film. And since the movie doesn’t work as straight drama either, that doesn’t leave us with any other reason to watch it. All that’s left is to be thankful to the film for getting the ball rolling on widescreen filmmaking, which ended up resulting in many movies that are far better and more enduring than The Robe.