Review: Exodus


Eva Marie Saint, an American widow and nurse in Cyprus, gets involved with the Jewish cause for Israel’s independence, when she meets and falls for rĂ©sistance leader Ari Ben Canaan (Paul Newman). Newman is trying to lead a boat containing 600 Jewish refugees from British-controlled Cyprus to freedom in Palestine. Sir Ralph Richardson is the smart but somewhat ambivalent British General Sutherland, who knew Saint’s husband, and can see right from wrong, but doesn’t much want to get involved. Peter Lawford plays a thoroughly disagreeable, anti-Semitic, pompous military man. Lee J. Cobb is Newman’s stoic father, whilst David Opatoshu scores highly as Cobb’s brother, whose ambitions for his people are the same, but whose methods are much different from his brother’s, with the latter the leader of an underground movement. Troubled young Sal Mineo has one of his best roles as a tempestuous young Jew who offers his services to Opatoshu’s somewhat dangerous group. Hugh Griffith has a high old time as a somewhat opportunistic player in the Israeli cause.



Needlessly overextended, not always convincing, but still fascinating, 1960 Otto Preminger (“River of No Return”, “Anatomy of a Murder”) epic, tackling the difficult subject of the 1947 struggle for Israel’s independence. Blue-eyed, all-American Newman isn’t physically convincing as an Israeli Resistance leader, but he tries his best in the role nonetheless, and is quite impassioned. Saint, meanwhile, is saddled with a frankly dopey, ignorant character the audience can’t quite warm to, especially in the first half of the film (Were people really ever this stupid? Wait...I don’t wanna know).



The supporting cast mostly succeed, with Mineo and Lawford doing some of their best-ever work, and some terrific, scene-stealing turns by Felix Aylmer, Richardson, Cobb, Griffith, and Opatoshu. Superb music score by Ernest Gold (“On the Beach”, “Judgement at Nuremberg”) earned an Oscar. If only it didn’t drag on and on so much! Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo (“A Guy Named Joe”, “Spartacus”), from a novel by Leon Uris (“Gunfight at the OK Corral”, “The Angry Hills”).



Rating: C+

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