Exodus

Struggle for statehood, circle of displacement, "an active life." The introductory view of Cyprus tests out the Super Panavision 70 lenses and announces the perspective, a travelogue panorama that comes to accommodate the expanding consciousness of the nurse from Indiana (Eva Marie Saint). A tourist's history lesson, begun by the British chief (Ralph Richardson) who rues the imperial mess in the Middle East, brought up to date by the Zionist agent (Paul Newman) leading Jewish refugees to a new homeland. Hunger strike aboard the freighter, divided visions in Palestine. "Little cakes and music" at the Haganah kibbutz run by the protagonist's father (Lee J. Cobb), on the other hand Irgun bombings ordered by his estranged uncle (David Opatoshu), whose philosophy lends a foretaste of Foucault. "Terror, violence, death. They are the midwives who bring free nations into this world." The genesis of Israel as an epic of contradiction and ambivalence, Otto Preminger the pragmatic dialectician wouldn't have it any other way. On location in the Valley of Jezreel, Deborah is invoked and the camera's shadow falls over the embracing couple, cf. Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia. The Auschwitz survivor (Sal Mineo) embodies the militant side, dynamite in Warsaw is the rebellious fantasy ruthlessly dismantled in a scene that typifies the uncanny balance of intensity and detachment of the mise en scène. (Macro and micro at Preminger's fingertips, the leader booms at the masses after the Partition Vote but grows mute when faced with his incarcerated brother.) The Acre Prison break is closely studied by Pontecorvo, the Arab voice is heard marginally but pointedly. "You've won your freedom. I've lost mine." "Child of light" (Jill Haworth) and mukhtar (John Derek) share a grave while machine-guns rattle in the distance, a "fatal optimism" since withered. "Who are you making the propaganda for? Them or us?" The analytical sweep is cheapened in Hollywood (Under Fire) but honored in Taiwan (City of Sadness). Cinematography by Sam Leavitt. With Peter Lawford, Hugh Griffith, Martin Miller, Gregory Ratoff, Felix Aylmer, Alexandra Stewart, and Marius Goring.