Exodus DVD > Reviews > Epic Film on the Birth of Israel

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Outstanding
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Not applicable

Advantages:	Historical drama of the first order
Disadvantages:	At 3 hr, 28 min, perhaps a tad too long

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Exodus is Otto Preminger's epic movie based on Leon Uris's novel depicting the birth of the modern State of Israel. Released in 1960, while memories of the political and historical struggles surrounding this event were still fresh, Exodus has come to define the drama of Israel's War for Independence for generations of moviegoers.

I'm not certain how often I've watched this film, but surely I've seen it at least 20 times during the past four-and-a-half decades. Though I was only 10 when Exodus was initially released, I still recall the excitement it created--even if I failed to understand its importance. I remember being mesmerized by Ernest Gold's musical score, particularly by the theme song itself. Forty-five years later, it still catches the imagination and moves the spirit:

"This land is mine,
God gave this land to me--
This great and ancient land to me.
And when the morning sun
Reveals the hills and plains
Then I see a land
Where children can run free."

This movie and this music captured and idealized the courage, the determination, and indeed, the chutzpah that made Israel possible. Filmed while the shadow of the Holocaust still lingered over Europe's vigorous recovery from World War II, it was undoubtedly one of the first movies to depict modern-day Jews as both heroic and romantic. And with the casting of blue-eyed Paul Newman (himself a Jew) as the gritty sabra Ari Ben Canaan, it did much to dispel the notion of a stereotypical Jewish "type." Exodus was so successful in all these areas that anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish groups in the United States and around the world concluded that it had been a calculated move to increase public sympathy for Israel.

During my more recent viewings of Exodus, I've begun to notice ways in which the film is showing its age. Overall, the acting is less sophisticated than we've come to expect these days. Still, there are a number of great scenes by accomplished actors, including Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo, Eva Marie Saint, David Opatoshu, and Peter Lawford--in addition to Paul Newman.

One of my all-time favorites of these great scenes has an anti-Semitic British officer played by Lawford searching in vain for a cinder in Newman's eye. The officer has just declared to Ari Ben Canaan, who is posing as a British officer, that he can always spot a Jew who tries to pass as a gentile. Of course, only the audience is in on the joke. The humor and pathos that make this scene work are not characteristic of the film as a whole. This is drama, not comedy, but ever the most serious drama needs a bit of humor to enhance its complexity--not to mention providing needed relief.

There are other ways in which this film shows its age. Despite its many themes--war, prejudice, murder, rape, pillage, and even a bit of family discord--not one word of onscreen profanity is uttered. I profess an old-fashioned sense of delight and relief over this fact. I'm tired of movies whose writers, directors, and producers seem to regard the potential for sales as roughly proportionate to how often the "f" word is used.

In other respects, Exodus still seems a thoroughly modern film. The cinematography (nominated for an Academy Award) provides gorgeous vistas of the Jezreel Valley, the Cypriot Harbor at Famagusta, and marvelous street scenes of ancient cities--all without the benefit of computer enhancements. Moreover, despite an admittedly pro-Israel bias, the film deals honestly with the complexity of Middle Eastern realities in a manner that holds up well even during this ongoing era of the off-again, on-again Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

With that in mind, there are a number of ways in which this film provides an important history lesson. It reminds viewers of facts and concepts that were once commonly known but over the course of 45 years have slipped out of the mainstream of memory. These include the fact that in 1948 and even in 1960, “Palestinian” was a word that referred to the Jewish residents of the British Mandate of Palestine. One of the ironies of history is that at the time this movie was filmed, the Palestinian identity was still primarily Jewish, and only secondarily Arab. Given the relative prosperity of the modern State of Israel, another lesson focuses on the desperate condition of European Jews after World War II. Survivors really had no place to go—at least, no place where they were welcome. Palestine provided the promise of a home where they could determine their own future and where they would not be regarded with suspicion as outsiders.

Still another lesson deals with the complexities of British policy over the years it held the Mandate. In 1917, when the Empire seized Palestine from the Turks, one of the expressed goals of the Crown was to provide support for the Zionist ambition to create a Jewish homeland in what had been ancient Israel. By the late 1930s, the realities of the politics of oil--not to mention the influx of Arabs as well as Jews into the Palestinian territories--led the British to close Palestine to Jewish settlement at the very time when Jews most needed to escape from the onrushing Holocaust. And in 1948, despite the United Nations’ two-state policy for Palestine, the pro-Arab position of British policy overtly encouraged the widespread Arab notion that they could sidestep the UN solution and simply “drive the Jews into the sea.” Exodus accurately (if stereotypically) portrays British attitudes on all sides of these issues.

I look forward to viewing this film many more times during the years to come. It is a poignant reminder of the price of freedom and self-determination--and the layers and deflection of truth that enfold every great movement in human history. Meanwhile, current events in the Middle East make this film relavent in many of the same old ways. And Israelis and modern Arab Palestinians still await a time when their children can run free.

© DAnneC/BawBaw, updated 2005