Exodus (1960)

 

                It is based on the 1958 bestseller by Leon Uris.  Director Otto Preminger did not like the book and had screenwriter Dalton Trumbo tone down the anti-British and anti-Arab vibe of the novel.  Preminger gave the blacklisted Trumbo screen credit under his actual name and this plus the credit for writing “Spartacus” marked the end of the blacklisting era.  Uris did not like the finished product.  The movie was shot on location on Cyprus and in Israel.  It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Sal Mineo) and Best Cinematography.  It won for Best Score (Ernest Gold).  Gold also won a Grammy.  The movie is credited with increasing support for Zionism and the nation of Israel in America.

                The British are detaining thousands of Jews in camps on Cypru in 1947s.  Many of them are survivors of the Holocaust and they want to go to Palestine to help start a new Jewish nation.  Ari Ben Canaan (Newman, who first appears shirtless) is a member of the Haganah and has a plan for over 600 Jews to escape in the old WWII transport ship called Exodus.  Ari meets an American gentile named Kitty (Eva Marie Saint) and their relationship starts off rocky, of course.  Kitty befriends a teenager named Karen (Jill Haworth).  She lost her whole family, except her father, who she is looking for.  The British won’t let the ship leave so Ari had the passengers go on a hunger strike and threatens to blow up the ship.  The Brits relent and let the ship sail.  It ends up at Haifa in Palestine.  There they find a conflict between Palestinian Arabs who do not want a Jewish state and a conflict within the Jewish community about how to achieve the Zionist dream of a Jewish nation.  Haganah is opposed by the Irgun, which is willing to use terrorism.  Dov Landau (Mineo) is a young man who survived Auschwitz by being a Sonderkommando.  He is a bomb expert.  The Irgun make use of his talents.  He and Karen fall in love and of course the same thing happens with Ari and Kitty.  If that’s not enough cliches, Ari is friends with Taha, a moderate Arab.  The movie moves on to the Acre Prison break.  Israel declares independence and the kibbutz that Kitty is helping at prepares to defend itself from Arab attack.  

                I don’t mind long movies, if there is a story to be told that deserves the length.  Most long war movies fit this qualification.  Unfortunately, “Exodus” is too long for the story it tells.  For instance, there is a long section dealing with the prison break and the payoff is weak and not worth the wait.  This is typical of a movie that teases action and seldom delivers.  So we’re left with a lot of talking and speechifying.  In fact, the movie concludes with a speech by Ari.  I’m sure no one laughed at the time when Ari predicts a day will come when Arabs and Jews will share the land.  I wonder what he would think if he were around today.  The drama interweaves with the two romances.  This must be part of the reason why the movie was popular with women.  However, there is little chemistry between Newman and Saint Marie and the romance is tepid.  Newman is otherwise strong in a role that was not a favorite of his.  The rest of the cast is not noteworthy.

                As far as the controversy, it appears that Preminger was successful in toning down the anti-British attitude of the book, but they still are villains.  What is surprising is the movie, although clearly sympathetic to the Zionists, does not demonize the Arabs.  The only significant Arab character is so friendly with Ari that he warns him of an impending Arab attack.  The movie did not fare well with British audiences and I have to assume it did worse in the Arab world.  But Americans, who had no dog in the fight, loved the movie.  Especially if they loved tear-jerkers.

None of the characters are real people, but some of the events are based on history.  Karaolos was a detention camp that was part of the system of camps on Cyprus designed to hold Holocaust victims who were determined to settle in Palestine.  SS Exodus 1947  was an old steamer that had been used off Normandy after D-Day as an accommodation ship.  It was used by over 4,000 Holocaust refugees to try to go from France to Palestine, but the Royal Navy boarded her and sailed her to Haifa where the refugees were forced to board other ships to be taken back to France.  Upon arrival at France, the French government refused to force the refugees to come ashore.  The Jews went on a 21-day hunger strike that got worldwide coverage.  Great Britain eventually relented and incredibly decided to send the ships to Hamburg, West Germany, where they were forced to disembark and were put in camps.  You can imagine what the press did with that.  Most of the refugees managed to sneak out and ended up in Palestine. Haganah was the main paramilitary organization that attempted to defy the British restrictions on Jewish migration and used sabotage on railways, bridges, and British ships attempting to deport illegal Jewish immigrants.  It became the main Jewish force in the war for independence and soon morphed into the Israeli army.  The Irgun broke away from Haganah because members felt the older organization was too moderate.  The Irgun became associated with terrorism.  One of which was the bombing of the King David Hotel that was referred to in the movie.  The Irgun believed “the end justifies the means”.  Acre Prison held a lot of Haganah and Irgun members arrested by the British.  The operation was by the Irgun and involved blowing a hole in an outside wall.  Irgun members inside the prison threw grenades smuggled in to keep the guards at bay.  In the chaos, hundreds of Arab prisoners also escaped through the hole.  As far as the kibbutz, it was fictional but represents a typical kibbutz.

GRADE  =  C