Exodus
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Movie Reviews of Exodus
Movie Review: Otto Preminger revisited...an excellent film....
Summary: 4 Stars
I saw this film a long, long time ago (in a VHS, pan and scan copy, ugh), but I recently saw Otto Preminger's The Cardinal, which I really liked. I usually don't like Preminger's work, as I found it too long and too self important. But after seeing The Cardinal, I went back and revisited his work, starting with Exodus.
I like this film a lot more the 2nd time around. It wasn't perfect. The romance between Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint's characters smacks of contrived Hollywood romance, and there is no chemistry between them at all. Some of the dialogue is silly as well. But there are many magnificent things about this film. It's very well acted and directed. Preminger shot a lot of the scenes in long takes, and it gives the film an excellent pace. Preminger's mise en scene is quite striking at times. There's a scene where Sal Mineo is talking to his girlfriend about how he wants to get to Palenstine and kill the British, and it's filmed all in one take. It's a medium close up of Sal, his girlfriend, and Paul Newman standing in the background. Otto lets it play out without a cut, and it all works. The scene where Sal Mineo is interrogated by a Jewish "terrorist/freedom" organization is one of the most powerful in the film. It goes on for a long time, yet it's necessary and it's beautifully acted and directed. The prison break out scene is done with minimal dialogue, and is very powerful as well. The scene where Sal Mineo escapes from British soldiers after blowing up the King David hotel is really strikingly shot as well. I also liked the scene where Lee J. Cobb announces that the UN has voted to give the Jewish people their own state in Palenstine. Otto doesn't show any generic crowd shots; he just shows the whole crowd (thousands of people), and it's pretty overwhelming. Ernest Gold's excellent music score is used sparingly. As with The Cardinal, there are no sledgehammer music cues in this film, which is a welcome change from most Hollywood films.
The film was shot on location in Israel in 1960. It wasn't really easy to do then, as Israel was still a young country with violence occurring every day, and all the equipment had to be imported from Hollywood, as Israel had no real film industry to speak of. Despite the logistics of the film, Otto shot the film in a mere 13 weeks. This is also the film where the McCarthy blacklist was broken permanently. The screenwriter was Dalton Trumbo, a known leftist and one of the Hollywood Ten. He was writing under a pseudonym, and Preminger had had enough. He announced that he was giving credit to Trumbo for his script. Contrary to popular belief, Preminger broke the blacklist first. Many have written that Kirk Douglas broke it on Spartacus (Trumbo also wrote that script), but it was Preminger who took the important first step, and Kirk took the 2nd step. I also admired the ending of the film, which is really dark, ambiguous, sad, yet realistic. It's not a contrived Hollywood happy ending, but an adult one, and one that, unfortunately, is still valid today. As for the DVD itself, it's a barebones one with a less than stellar transfer and muddy sound. There are scenes that looked washed out and grainy, and others that look superb. MGM didn't really do a good job here, and it's a shame, as this film deserves a deluxe treatment.
Aside from a few flaws, this is an excellent film, one that I am glad I revisited. It's worth checking out for anyone who wants to appreciate Otto Preminger and the ways of old Hollywood.
Movie Review: Solid, well-made epic, but reservations about DVD quality.
Summary: 4 Stars
Exodus is a sprawling, 3 and half-hour epic that sets several fictional characters against the backdrop of the founding of modern Israel after the Second World War. The story opens in Cyprus, where thousands of European Jewish refugees are being detained by the British. The refugees are trying to make it to Palestine--which the British control--and form a new Jewish state. Eva Marie Saint plays an American nurse, recently widowed, who becomes involved in the refugees' plight, especially that of a young girl, Karen (Jill Haworth), searching for her father. Paul Newman is an Israeli freedom fighter who is determined to get a shipload of the refugees out of Cyprus to Palestine--while finding time to romance Saint. Karen worries about her friend Dov (Sal Mineo), an Auschwitz survivor who wants nothing more than to join a Jewish terrorist organization, which happens to be facilitated by Newman's uncle (David Opatoshu).Exodus was a huge blockbuster back in 1960-61, with Ernest Gold's memorable, Oscar-winning score even making the Top 10 charts. The film also places a footnote in Hollywood history, as it was one of two films that year that dared to credit blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (his other 1960 credit was Sparticus); Trumbo's adaptation of the Leon Uris book is largely straight-forward, focusing more on the plotting than on the characters. Fortunately, with Otto Preminger in command, the flick moves along briskly, what with glorious wide-screen vistas of Cyprus and Israel and several genuinely exciting action sequences--especially a terrific prison break-out. The film's somber coda is even more moving considering that the issues it raises are still unresolved to this day.
Newman and Saint are nice to look at, but there's not much chemistry between them--he seems stiff and she's just, well, saintly. The supporting cast is much better. Mineo received an Oscar nomination for this (he lost to Sparticus' Peter Ustinov), primarily for his emotional interrogation scene where he recounts his experiences at Auschwitz. Haworth is delicate but headstrong. Opatoshu, for my money, was the best thing in the whole movie--methodical, yet quietly commanding--there's a wordless scene between him and Lee J. Cobb (playing his brother) that is just marvelous. The cast of thousands also includes Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford, Hugh Griffith, John Derek, Gregory Ratoff, and George Maharis.
This being an MGM DVD, there isn't much in the way of extras--just the original theatrical trailer and several choices for subtitles. As noted elsewhere, the quality of the transfer isn't as high as one would like--the sound, especially, should've been remixed while the the picture quality is terrific sometimes and other times less than perfect. Hopefully, they'll reissue it with improved specs.
Movie Review: "He that curseth his father...or mother, shall surely be put to death.' Exodus
Summary: 4 Stars
In an excellent adaptation of the novel, "Exodus" by Leon Uris, this movie gives us an interesting look back at the birth of Israel.
The movie opens as a boat filled with European refugees arrives and is sent to a refugee camp in Cyprus.
Paul Newman plays Ben Canaan. He has a plan to take the entire group of refugees that has just arrived and lead them to Israel. The U.N. is about to vote on the Israel/Palestine partician and escaping with a boat filled with Jews, many who have suffered under Hitler's programs to eliminate the Jewish religion, will create world-wide publicity.
Eva Marie Saint portrays Kitty Freemont, who is visiting General Sutherland, portrayed by Ralph Richardson. Kitty's husband was a news photographer and was killed the year before while on assignment in Israel. Now, Kitty doesn't seem to have a meaning to her life and Gen. Sutherland proposes that since she is a trained nurse, she help out at the refugee camp.
At the camp, Kitty meets a young Jewish girl and becomes fond of in a motherly fashion. Her goal becomes to help this girl, move from the camp so that Kitty could take her to America to go to school and possibly be adopted by Kitty.
Once the refugees arrive in Israel, the setting was well done, with the arid area and the views of the Jewish youth camp in Israel. We
see the spitit and bravery of the young Jewish settlers.
Newman's voice was felt as a moderate wanting Jewish settlers and their Arab neighbors to live in peace and work together. He makes the viewer wonder what the world would have been like today, if only his dreams of peaceful co-existence could have been met.
The music that accompanied the movie was excellent with a military type of sound that went with the accomplishments of the settlers.
Highly recommended.
Movie Review: A 210-Minute Run-Time Does Not Alone A Great Film Make
Summary: 4 Stars
Though not in the same class as the David Lean films of the era, Exodus still tells a weighty tale. Set in the Mediterranean and Mid-East right after World War Two, this story of Jewish refugees and the struggle to establish Israel seems in the twenty-first century both fascinatingly historic and also sorrowfully naive. I kept wondering what the central characters from the 1940's would have thought had they been able to see the future and glimpse what their idealistic experiment in colonization would set in motion over the next sixty years. Paul Newman has great presence in this movie, and is particularly pleasing when he privately mocks the bigoted British officer who claims he can "always spot the face of a Jew." However it is Saul Mineo, playing a displaced Jewish teen, whose on-screen anger at the world steals the show from its stars. Exodus moves slowly but still manages to exclude an excess of depth from its plot. I also knew almost from the start that the innocent blonde Danish girl was surely marked for sacrifice, and this almost seemed tedious. As I watched Exodus I often contemplated what the film might have been in the hands of David Lean, or even a young Stanley Kubric, because there was something choppy about the final product, especially in the ways scenes were so obviously spliced together in an attempt to give the illusion that a conversation was going on when in actuality actors were speaking lines not to one another but to an empty set. It was little things like that more than even its unnecessarily long run-time that brought Exodus from classic to near-classic. Even its soundtrack lacked the force of a masterpiece.Movie Review: 1960 was a long time ago - still holds up however
Summary: 4 Stars
When viewing this movie it is important to remember that the events it mythologizes happened only a dozen years before. The Six-days war of 1967 was still in the future, as was the Yom Kippur war of 1973, the Camp David Peace Accords with Sadat (and Sadat's assassination), the 1972 Olympic murders, and the various Intifadas. So, it was a time of beginnings and hope with the horrors of the holocaust part of the life experience of everyone involved in the founding of Israel.
The book was amazingly popular, the movie had a strong cultural impact, and the theme music was part of the popular culture for years. Is it a great movie? Probably not. Certainly, it would be edited differently if made today. Like many popular pieces taken out of their time certain aspects of the story seem artificial, like the whole of the Eva Marie Saint character. She seems to be there to give the non-Jewish audience a romantic connection to the story. Not that Eva Marie Saint does a bad job; it is just that she seems unnecessary today.
However, it is an enjoyable movie. My eleven and thirteen year olds were captivated by it and holding their attention for over three hours is a testimony to the power the movie still retains.
I was a bit disappointed in the quality of the print transfer and that there was NO booklet about the movie in the package, nor any extras about the making of the movie. I remember the program that was sold in theaters that should be reproduced when someone gets around to making a higher quality DVD of this movie.