Heston crosses his Moses-to-be with Noah as he leads his 'children' and menagerie cross-country, while Stewart's killer-on-the-lam does a wonderfully affecting 'tears of a clown' number in the true, tacky circus tradition of sawdust, spectacle and sentiment. (Time Out Film Guide)

when you throw in a train wreck complete with marauding elephants and prowling pussycats, you've got about as much spectacle as any film needs. It's overblown, unconvincing melodrama and may leave you wishing for some sawdust to spit into. (Film 4)

As big, broad and heavy as the elephants that lumber through it, The Greatest Show on Earth will find a surefire audience among circus fans. Other moviegoers who endure its two hours and 33 minutes will have to console themselves mostly by laughing at a story that often makes a travesty of itself. (Time)

The Greatest Show on Earth is as apt a handle for Cecil B. DeMille's Technicolored version of the Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey circus as it is for the sawdust extravaganza itself. This is the circus with more entertainment, more thrills, more spangles and as much Big Top atmosphere as RB-B&B itself can offer. (Variety)

Cecil B. DeMille, movie master of the super-colossal, has taken on a subject which is already super-colossal, and the result just goes to prove you can only do so much with sawdust and stable smells. (Harvard Crimson)

The captivation of this picture is in the brilliance with which it portrays the circus and all its movement, not as a mere performing thing but, as Mr. DeMille says in the narration, as a restless and mobile giant. (New York Times)