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Exodus

Exodus on DVD

By Jim Bray

The story of Jewish pilgrims trying to find a home in their traditional homeland makes for a wonderful, powerful historical drama, but in this case it’s captured on a lousy DVD.

Paul Newman stars as Ari Ben Cannon, an Israeli underground commander who at film’s opening shows up in Cyprus to steer a group of some six hundred refugees from a holding camp to a ship they plan to use to sneak them into Palestine.

The time is the aftermath of World War II and all its horrors, including of course the anti-Jewish Holocaust, and there is as yet no place for the thousands upon thousands of displaced Jewish people to go. No one, it appears, will have them.

They’re desperately trying to carve out a homeland in Palestine, their home in biblical times, so they can finally have a place where they can live in peace without having to fear being rounded up and killed.

But it appears to them that the world seems to be conspiring against them and, despite the fact that the fate of a Jewish state is being considered by the United Nations (which, apparently, at that time had some relevance), the Jewish people find themselves incarcerated in camps like the one in Cyprus because the British who currently rule the Palestine area have no place to put them.

With Ari as their leader, the 600 mount a hunger strike and force and shame the British government to release the ship from their blockade and let it head for Palestine. Once there, the fight for a homeland really begins.

I have no idea how historically accurate Exodus may be, especially since the movie is based on a novel, but it certainly feels right considering my admittedly limited knowledge of events of that time. But it’s a moving and at times gripping drama of a people who only want to be left alone, but who throughout history have been victims of various haters and have had enough.

Not that the movie doesn’t portray the Jewish people as paragons of virtue - or all Arabs as bloodthirsty villains. Ari’s childhood friend (played by John Derek) is an Arab - who ends up coming into conflict with his own people over his love and respect for his friend and his family. And a member of Ari’s family is a Jewish terrorist whose tactics appear very similar to those being used today against the Jewish people by Palestinians - and whose illegal and immoral tactics lead to him being sentenced to death.

Dalton Trumbo’s screenplay imparts just the right feel to Exodus, and Otto Preminger’s direction has crafted a three and a half hour movie that’s never slow and, though a lot of it is very talky, is engrossing and involving. The performances are top notch, especially Sal Mineo as an idealistic Jewish boy, Eva Marie Saint as a gentle gentile who becomes Ari Ben Cannon’s love interest, Jill Haworth as a young Jewish girl who becomes smitten by Mineo's character, and the late Sir Ralph Richardson as a British commander with a conscience.

If you want to get a feel for how the middle East got to where it is today, at least as told through Hollywood’s filter (which is probably no worse than the media’s), Exodus fits as a piece of a set that would include “The Ten Commandments,” “Ben-Hur,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Schindler’s List,” with “Exodus” and “Cast a Giant Shadow” at the end. It would be a movie marathon, indeed, since none of these movies are particularly short, but it would be a great one.

Unfortunately, for whatever dumb reason it may have, MGM has inflicted a seriously substandard DVD onto an unsuspecting marketplace. Exodus is, indeed, presented in widescreen, but it isn’t anamorphic widescreen enhanced for 16x9 TV’s, so those who’ve bitten the bullet and shelled out the cash for a new technology TV are going to be seriously disappointed. It’s a shame, too, because the images in this movie cry out for a large screen presentation.

As such, if you watch it on a widescreen TV you’ll have to zoom it to fill the screen and this will cost you resolution. The result is a soft and pixilized picture with many artifacts. This is completely unacceptable in a 2002 video release!

Likewise the audio, which is presented in its original “Stereo surround” configuration, should have been remastered into Dolby Digital 5.1. What we end up with here is a soundtrack that, despite its use of the center front channel, has sounds all over the place, with lousy localization and a general lack of acceptable quality for this day and age in the video revolution. It also doesn't serve Ernest Gold's Oscar-winning score, with its haunting theme, very well, either,

How can MGM do such a great job on some old movies (some of which, arguably, don’t deserve such treatment) while a widescreen epic like this was ignored? Anti-semitism? Probably not, since the Jewish community is quite large in Hollywood. More likely it was just boneheadedness, or a new executive on board who doesn’t understand the difference between “letterboxed” and “anamorphic.”

It’s a shame.

And the only extra you get is the theatrical trailer.

Exodus would make a fine special edition disc, with lots of background material that can help put it into historical perspective - and maybe MGM is planning one for down the road. I certainly hope so, because this movie deserves to be seen but not on this seriously flawed DVD.

In the meantime, I can't recommend this as a "for purchase" DVD.

Exodus, from MGM Home video
202 min. widescreen letterboxed (not 16x9 TV compatible), aspect ratio 2.35:1, “Stereo Surround” audio
Starring Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford, Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo
Written by Dalton Trumbo
Produced and directed by Otto Preminger

 

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Updated May 13, 2006