A masterpiece by Otto Preminger that cannot be seen often enough and is shown far too rarely.
Exodus is an American monumental film from 1960 lasting almost three and a half hours and provides a kind of prehistory to the founding of the state of Israel and recalls how the British Mandate became Israel after the Shoah
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The film mixes historical events with fictional storylines - just like Leon Uris in the original novel.
Cyprus, 1947: Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Jews from all over the world, including many Holocaust survivors, arrive in the British colony to cross over to Palestine. However, the British, who have taken over the mandate for Palestine, refuse to allow them to leave and the 300,000 or so refugees end up in internment camps. The American nurse Kitty Fremont (Eva Marie Saint) works as a volunteer in one of the camps, where she meets the radical Jewish underground fighter Ari Ben Gannan (Paul Newman). Together with several hundred other refugees, he wants to escape from the camp and board the "Exodus", which is supposed to take them to the promised land. When the British occupying forces prevent the ship from setting sail, the Jews go on hunger strike...
Director: Otto Preminger
Screenplay: Dalton Trumbo
Cinematographer: Sam Leavitt
Editing: Louis R. Loeffler
Music: Ernest Gold
With Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford, Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo, John Derek, Hugh Griffith, Gregory Ratoff, David Opatoshu and many more.
