Exodus

The title really fits, because in the first half Jewish refugees (mostly Holocaust survivors) are trying to escape a British detention camp and they get blockaded in a harbor while their leaders try to convince the British to let their people go. It then follows the struggle in Palestine to establish a Jewish state. I especially liked the arc of Ari and how he goes from hardline "we can never trust anyone but ourselves" to eventually falling in love with a non-Jewish woman.

It's a great historical epic, although the subject matter is admittedly extremely controversial. Nevertheless, I really liked it, and I got really invested in the outcome of the characters. One criticism I see is that it drags on for too long, although I didn't think even its long running time was enough to tell all of the stories and do them justice. So perhaps this would have been a better mini-series than movie, as other Leon Uris books were, but then there would be no such thing as the mini-series until the 1970s.

One comical moment is when Paul Newman's character, Ari Ben Canaan, is listening to Peter Lawford, playing a British officer, talk about how he can spot a Jew a mile away. Ben Canaan asks Lawford to look in his eye for a cinder, Lawford's character obliges as he continues to go on about Jewish stereotypes. Of course, blonde blue-eyed Paul Newman is Jewish, as is his character.

There's great tragedy here too though, particularly at the end. There's also the fact that the refugees' own lives having been made cheap during the Holocaust has made others lives seem cheap now. This is especially true of Dov Landau (Sal Mineo) who witnessed unspeakable horrors during the Holocaust, and that experience has made him hard enough that he can blow up 83 people who are guests in a British hotel in Palestine and consider it a job well done.

I'd recommend this one, but if you have time to read the book that is also time very well spent.