mikephilipsmith
An excellent film, well acted, and trying largely successfully to explain the mess Britain found itself in after Word War 2 having made conflicting promises to the Jewish leaders and Arab leaders, to basically survive two world wars, and then the mandate that left UK stuck with trying to solve the problem. Of course, nowadays the Left with its revisionist view of the past hates this film and would hate it no matter how good it was on every level so there is no need to review certain reviews on here or elsewhere.
Balthazar_Bresson
Exodus... or how Zionism was romanticized for an American audience to get a broader acceptance in times when good and reliable information was scarce and people still trusted cinema as their source of news as in the times of news reels.This film is pure Zionist propaganda, with terrible stilted acting, triumphalist unreal dialogue and an inane fictional scenario, like all propaganda films tend to be.In short: it's chuck full of romantic bullshit, ergo gratia, a group of Jewish immigrants pull a Masada on a ship off the coast of Cyprus and so on and so forth with an ending that will make any self-respecting viewer's stomach turn or even vomit.How unfortunate that many, if not most, of the places here depicted have been destroyed by the very same people this film tries to sanitize and exult.This film could easily be placed up there (or more appropriately "down there") with the Nazi film Jud Süß ("Süss the Jew")3:30 hours LOOOONG... no wonder comedian Mort Sahl, so they say, when attending the premiere, apparently bored by the lengthy film, stood up after three hours and exclaimed, "Otto, let my people go!" Can't deny that both cinematography and locations were amazing, therefore I'm giving it a generous high mark of 4 stars out of 10.
LeonLouisRicci
It's difficult to know what the thinking was behind this film. From the miscasting to the dull representation of what is, to the Jewish people, the culmination of an historical quest for independence and freedom.The movie is so uninformative, considering its length, and so relentlessly tepid that one can only put the blame, perhaps, on the stilted and bland Hollywood mindset of the 1950's. Why all the blonds? Why are the most powerful elements of the struggle so inept and hazy? The film looks like an uninspired TV Movie and it commits the most grievous of Sins. It does not entertain or enlighten the audience. It is just boring beyond belief.
Robert Jetter
In my humble opinion, this wonderful directorial effort by Otto Preminger is left without an ending. With Leon Uris' novel as the backdrop, and my own mother's history as an inspiration, the movie leaves you flat.After all of the struggle to return the Jews to Palestine, after all of the drama of death and destruction and politics, we are left with a story that ends short of the finish line. The kibbutz are under siege and the death of Karen (Jill Haworth's character)leave us with a conviction for Dov Landau, Ms. Fremont and Ari Ben Canaan to go forward to commit Israel to the freedom it now enjoys.Of course, in 1960, it was premature to predict or film a story that would end in a free and liberated Israel. So it is not so much the story with which one must take umbrage but the time in which it was filmed.Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson and Lee J Cobb are brilliant in the film while Paul Newman, Peter Lawford and Sal Mineo offer eye candy for the women of the day.The story must fall short due to its timing not its inclination but all in all, a story that must be finished to be important. Time for an Exdous2?
AD
