Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Like a Visconti epic gone mad, explosive, beautiful, unforgettable. [08 Dec 2006, p.C8]

Austin Chronicle by Kathleen Maher

1900 is a marvelous movie, Bertolucci is one of the best directors who has ever lived.

Slant Magazine by Jaime N. Christley

Bernardo Bertolucci’s film is a living, fluid organism that spans the distances between several poles of extremity.

USA Today by Mike Clark

Haphazard in its narrative but consistently mesmerizing until an overdose of communist rah-rah in the late going. [08 Dec 2005, p.4E]

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

The story is almost too small for Bertolucci's sprawling approach, and the ungainliness of his international cast stifles both the dialogue and the performances.

Empire by David Parkinson

An epic masterpiece, albeit in need of a tweak here and there.

The New Yorker by Pauline Kael

1900 is a romantic moviegoer's vision of the class struggle -- a love poem for the movies as well as for the life of those who live communally on the land.

Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas

Even in the full-length Italian version, 1900 is too emotionally extravagant ever to be considered a masterpiece. Rather, it’s a monumental achievement like such original and impassioned but scarcely flawless screen epics as D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Abel Gance’s Napoleon.

Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr

Some scenes are banal and offensively simpleminded. But patience, ultimately, is rewarded with a welter of detail and some mighty fine camerawork.

Variety

Bertolucci’s ambitious generational canvas is elaborately constructed.

Variety by Staff (Not Credited)

Bertolucci’s ambitious generational canvas is elaborately constructed.

TV Guide Magazine

Like a delicious pasta salad, ruined with intermittent slabs of Velveeta cheese.

The New York Times by Vincent Canby

It's a shapeless mass of film stock containing some brilliant moments and a lot more that are singularly uninspired.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Bertolucci can direct great set pieces, of course, and some of his biggest scenes (like the outdoor dances that are his favorites) are spectacular. But he needs well-defined characters to anchor his stories, and he seems more confident when he drills into their psyches instead of spreading himself all over the ideological map.

Time Out

Whether one takes the two-part movie as a glamorous epic or as a lengthy advertisement for the Italian communist party, it still looks like a major catastrophe.