Exodus
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Movie Reviews of Exodus
Movie Review: An excellent movie - but sad
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an excellent movie, but could have been even better. And as a previous reviewer noted, it would have made a great mini-series. Even at 3 ½ hours the plot is very compressed. What took years to happen in real life seems like only months in the movie. I found myself looking up events on the Internet in order to keep track with what year it was in the movie. Some of the plot seems far fetched at first: Subjecting children to a hunger strike for example. And the prison break scene is right out of "Robin Hood." I was amazed, therefore, to learn these events really happened. The acting is wooden in places, but nevertheless you grow to care about the characters. The scenery and music are magnificent. The ending is a disappointment though. (Here comes a spoiler.) We never get to see the actual birth of Israel in May 1948. Instead the movie ends shortly before that with Paul Newman's character giving an idealistic speech about Arabs and Jews living in peace. The viewer is cheated out of seeing how Newman's character reconciles his idealism with the reality of the War for Independence. The movie is also quite poignant. It was made in 1960, and all the extras we see dancing around the kibbutz were real Israelis. It's sad to think that all those children and happy young people grew up to experience no end to war. Another irony is that Jewish terrorists play a prominent role in the film using bombs in an attempt to drive the British out of Palestine.Movie Review: OTTO PREMINGER, OPUS 27
Summary: 4 Stars
**** 1960. Based on Leon Uris's Exodus and produced and directed by Otto Preminger. One Academy award (Music) and two other nominations. Paul Newman is Ari Ben Canaan, one of the leaders of a Jewish independence movement. He manages to force the British forces to let the boat Exodus leave Cyprus with more than 600 Jews on board and reach the port of Haïfa. When Otto Preminger directed EXODUS, he was detached from the Hollywood studios and independent for some years. After Bonjour Tristesse, Anatomy of a Murder and PORGY AND BESS, he chose to adapt to the screen another bestseller: EXODUS. If everybody agrees that this 210 min. film isn't a masterpiece, I didn't yawn once during the projection however. I particularly liked the way Otto Preminger paralleled Israel's destiny and Eva Marie Saint's psychological evolution. I'm more confused in front of Preminger's handling of the extremisms: between the blonde and passive Karen and the wild Dov Landau, between smooth integration and armed guerrila warfare, the director favoured the latter. Art and Life can't obviously meet. Highly recommended.Movie Review: embarassingly dated
Summary: 4 Stars
It gets harder and harder to watch this movie, especially the young Paul Newman's final screed on the death of Karen (relax, Butch! Jill Haworth's only pretending to the dead!). As a document of the transition from Gandhi's hunger strike, intended to embarass the British into behaving decently, to the Irgun's ruthless bombing of the King David Hotel, intended to bloody the British into leaving Israel alone and unprotected in the exact middle of her traditional blood enemies (Arabs? what Arabs?), it's informative. The movie barely scratches the surface of hatreds that have festered in the Middle East for millenia, and the glossy Hollywood overcoat has peeled away from the history over the years, but as a faithful reflection of a naivete we Americans will have to overcome to have any hope of surviving nuclear armageddon on Ariel Sharon's cattle ranch, it's pretty good. In today's hip-hop world, Sal Mineo's deep dark secret that he was raped by Nazis in Dachau seems laughable -- these days, you can hear that kind of gangsta rap from the Toyota next to you at a red light. As a call to menschlichkeit in a harsh world, 4 stars.Movie Review: Exodus
Summary: 4 Stars
Exodus is a very historically accurate movie about the famous boat "Exodus" that illegally got countless Holocaust survivors to Israel, then Palestine, and, ultimately, it is also about the creation of the State of Israel.
I believe the movie is pretty good and well thought out; all the characters are completely believable (Paul Newman was great as the main character!), and the story line and plot are great. Some scenes were very impressive, realistic, and even a bit disturbing. However, the movie is exceptionally long, and that makes the viewers lose interest on it after a while and "miss" a lot of good parts.
Still, it's a good film and definitely worth your time - if you have it! I suggest not watching the whole movie at once, but rather taking a few breaks in between, because, quite frankly, otherwise, the magic of the whole movie is lost.
Movie Review: Stirring adaptation of Leon Uris' novel
Summary: 4 Stars
Dalton Trumbo wrote and Otto Preminger directed a magnificent adaptation of Leon Uris' epic novel of the foundation of Israel. As a movie, it is perhaps a little TOO epic at a bit over 3 1/2 hours (but "Gone With The Wind" was 30 min longer), and has been stuffed onto a single DVD, presented in "letterboxed" 2.35:1 widescreen (for the 1.33:1 TV screen - requiring the viewer to "zoom" their 16x9 TV to fill their screen width). A newer transfer would be welcome.
Historic accuracy may or may not have been preserved, but the film does follow the novel as I remember it, and the performances are terrific.
Well worth watching.