Ari Ben Canaan, a passionate member of the Jewish paramilitary group Haganah, attempts to transport 600 Jewish refugees on a dangerous voyage from Cyprus to Palestine on a ship named the Exodus. He faces obstruction from British forces, who will not grant the ship passage to its destination.
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I had just read the book and did not remember the movie, so I watched it. Paul Newman was not very believable until very near the end. His portrayal of Ari Ben Canaan was not convincing. One of the characters who is important to the plot to embarrass the English into releasing the Exodus in the book, does not appear in the movie. Ari's sister, Jordana, has a adversarial relationship with Kitty that only comes out in an off-hand statement from Kitty about how Ari's sister talks to her. In addition to missing relationships and characters, the character development did not match the book and it seemed that movement from scene to scene was not smooth. A rating of 3 might be generous.
1. This is a movie, folks. Yes, based on a novel, but it was just that - a novel. Uris didn't claim to be writing a history textbook. As with all memorable literature, he tweaked some facts and embroidered his landscape with memorable fictional characters (although yes, many were based on real-life people.) So it's not appropriate to criticize either the novel or the book for not getting every historical fact absolutely right.2. This is a MOVIE, folks. Based on a novel, but it's still a movie. Which meant that the actors were cast for a variety of reasons, one of which was solid bank-ability at the box office. To those who complained that Eva Marie Saint is too old in this film, I'd like to remind them that she was only a few months older (in real life) than Paul Newman was. And having her a bit older than the character in the novel is fine, since she brings a different life perspective than someone in her 20s would have. Especially since she was playing a widow. just mho. 3. What has depressed me is that this IMDb discussion of a movie has brought out the Haters. I don't mean people who hated the movie; I mean people who hate Jews and the State of Israel. Apparently, no amount of art, or even actual history, will ever be enough for some people to stop hating, to get them to stop looking for every possible opportunity to malign any group of people they get something -- however perverse or destructive -- out of hating. 4. My personal opinion of this movie is that it's an excellent MOVIE. It entertains. It teaches us a few basic facts about the creation of Israel that most of us never learned in school. It is well-cast, well-acted, well-directed, and well-photographed. In addition, it has a great score throughout the film (not just the very memorable main theme.) I saw it at a movie theater when I was fairly young, and I've probably seen it on TV over a dozen times since then. I also read the novel (a long time ago), but if I've learned anything over the years, it's that movies and novels are different animals that can't fairly be compared page-for-page, so to speak. Heck - ever read "Gone With The Wind?" In the novel, Scarlett has one child with each of her husbands, but in the movie, she only has the one child, with Rhett. But no one complains about it because it's a damn good movie. And so is "Exodus." It's damn good movie.
Someone above wrote "That, and the events that the Six-Day War led to, have eroded the moral assurance that many of the main characters of "Exodus" espouse about Israel and its founding, and would eventually lead to the moral quagmire found 45 years later in Steven Spielberg's "Munich." Today, "Munich" is much closer to the grayness of who is right or wrong in the modern-day Middle East than the black-and-white assumptions that drive the characters of "Exodus" in 1947 -- or its creators in 1960."What a pile of duki.The only "moral quagmire" is the one espoused by moral -equivocating enablers of jihad who see Israel as part of their stumbling block in "deconstructing" the Judeo-Christian West.It's very simple. The Jews were there before the Arabs, BEFORE Islam, the Jews were dispersed, they ALWAYS looked to return, they returned, they offered to share, the UN offered to share, the Arabs were not interested in sharing, only in exterminating the Jews, as most of them are even today.Spielberg's Munich is a perfect example of a guilt-ridden, successful JINO film-maker operating under the Stockholm syndrome, making the the Mossad agents who take out the assassins from the Olympics appear as evil as the PLO killers.Here's a hot tip - there IS good and evil in this world, and if you can't see it, then pluck out your eyes and don't bore the rest of us with your insipid, Howard Zinn-inspired, Marxist film critiques.We need MORE movies like Exodus, not like Munich.
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?
