maces and daggers, 650 suits of chain mail (woven from hemp and coated with a metal varnish), and 500 saddles. Release El Cid had its world premiere at the Metropole Theatre, Victoria, London on December 6, 1961. On December 14, 1961, the film premiered at the Warner Theatre in New York City and premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on December 18. For the film's international release, distributors included the Rank Organization releasing the film in Britain, Dear Film in Italy, Astoria Filmes in Portugal, Filmayer in Spain, and Melior in Belgium. In August 1993, the film was re-released in theaters by Miramax Films having undergone a digital and color restoration supervised by Martin Scorsese. The re-release added 16 minutes of restored footage back to the film's initial 172-minute running time for a total of 188 minutes. Home media The film was released on January 29, 2008 as a deluxe edition and a collector's edition DVD. Both DVDs included bonus materials including archival cast interviews, as well as 1961 promotional radio interviews with Loren and Heston; an audio commentary from Bill Bronston (son of Samuel Bronston) and historian-author Neal M. Rosendorf; a documentary on the importance of film preservation and restoration; biographical featurettes on Samuel Bronston, Anthony Mann, and Miklos Rozsa; and a "making of" documentary, "Hollywood Conquers Spain." The collector's edition DVD also included a reproduction of the premiere's souvenir program and a comic book, as well as six color production stills. Reception Box office By January 1963, the film had grossed $8 million in box office rentals in the United States and Canada. The film finished its box office run, earning $26.6 million in the United States and Canada. Overall, it returned $12 million in box office rentals (the distributor's share of the box office gross). Critical response Contemporary reviews Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote "it is hard to remember a picture--not excluding Henry V, Ivanhoe, Helen of Troy and, naturally, Ben-Hur--in which scenery and regal rites and warfare have been so magnificently assembled and photographed as they are in this dazzler ... The pure graphic structure of the pictures, the imposing arrangement of the scenes, the dynamic flow of the action against strong backgrounds, all photographed with the 70mm color camera and projected on the Super-Technirama screen, give a grandeur and eloquence to this production that are worth seeing for themselves".