Category Archives: Film Review

Ghosts of Sundance Past: Minari (dir by Lee Isaac Chung)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Sundance Film Festival is currently underway in Utah.  For the next few days, I’ll be taking a look at some of the films that have previously won awards at Sundance.

First released in 2000, Minari is a classic story of the pursuit of the American dream.

Taking place in the early 80s, the movie follows Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun), a South Korean immigrant who relocates his family from California to Arkansas.  Jacob has purchased a farm and he plans to make a fortune selling Korean produce to restaurants in Dallas.  (Dallas, I should mention, does have a very large Korean population so Jacob’s plan is not a bad one.)  Jacob is enthusiastic and confident that his plan will succeed.  His wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) is a bit less confident.  She doesn’t want to live in a mobile home and she worries about the health of her young son David (Alan Kim), who has a heart murmur.  Monica feels that her husband has dragged them out to the middle of nowhere and that he has no idea what he’s doing.  Jacob is determined to become a success and he even hires his first employee, Paul (Will Patton), a local eccentric who often walks up and down the highway with a cross on his back.

I have to admit that I was initially a bit cautious about watching Minari.  I have family from Arkansas.  When I was growing up, my family sometimes lived in Arkansas.  (When I was growing up, we moved around so much that I used to just think of Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, Colorado, and Texas as just being one big state that I called home.)  Arkansas is one of those states that is usually not treated particularly kindly in the movies.  For that reason, I was pleasantly surprised by Minari.  Jacob may be an outsider, as both an immigrant and a former Californian, but, for the most part, the people that he meets are kind and willing to help.  Paul is especially an interesting character.  Many movies would have treated Paul as a redneck joke but, in Minari, he’s given a certain dignity.  The cinematography is wonderful, capturing the humid beauty of not just Arkansas but the midwest in general.  Jacob and his family are 20th century pioneers, exploring what for them is a new and untouched land.

Eventually, Monica’s mother, Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung), comes to stay with the family.  She shares a room with David and it takes a while for David to get used to his grandmother.  (David complains that she doesn’t act like a grandmother.)  It also takes Soon-ja a while to get used to life in Arkansas.  Youn Yuh-jung won a deserved Oscar for her performance here, playing a stranger in a strange land who ultimately inspires David to find his own inner strength.  The scenes between Youn and Alan Kim are some of the strongest in the film.  Towards the end of the film, Youn has a scene that truly left me in tears.

Minari is about the pursuit of the American dream but it’s also about the strength of family.  Jacob is not always a sympathetic character but he proves himself in the end.  The film ends on an ambiguous note but I choose to believe that Jacob eventually found his fortune.

Minari won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and, like many so many Sundance hits in the past, it went on to be nominated for Best Picture.  It lost to Nomadland, despite Minari being a far superior film.  That’s the Academy for you.

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Maestro (dir by Bradley Cooper)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I hope that Bradley Cooper  will win an Oscar soon.

It’s obvious that Cooper wants that Oscar and really, who can blame him?  After spending years being dismissed as a lightweight comedy actor, Cooper has really come into his own over the past thirteen years.  2012 was the year that he starred in Silver Linings Playbook and received his first Best Actor nomination.  In the years that followed, he was nominated for American Sniper, American Hustle, A Star Is Born and Maestro.  He deserved to be nominated for both Nightmare Alley and Licorice Pizza.  Cooper has shown himself to be both a talented actor and director.  He may not have been nominated for his direction of A Star Is Born but everyone knows that he should have been.  He’s come a long way from being the star of The Hangover films and it makes sense that he would want an Oscar to make it official.

(The Oscar itself may not carry the cultural cachet that it once did but seriously, an award is an award.)

That desire for an Oscar is probably the best way to explain 2023’s Maestro, a film that really might as well have just been called Oscar Bait.  Not only did Cooper direct and co-write Maestro but he also donned a prosthetic nose (and was briefly the center of some online controversy) to play the role of composer Leonard Bernstein.  Filmed in both black-and-white and color, the film follows Leonard Bernstein from his young debut as a conductor through his marriage to Felecia (Carey Mulligan).  Throughout the film, Felecia remains Leonard’s strongest supporter and his muse, even when she’s embarrassed by the rumors of his own impulsive behavior and his habit of cheating on her with men.  The film is a portrait of the struggle to be a genius, the struggle to support a genius, and the love that can hold two people together even during the most difficult of times.  And it’s all very Oscar bait-y, giving both Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan several scenes that, while well-executed, still feel as if they were designed specifically to appeal to the voters.

I had mixed feelings about Maestro when I watched it.  On the one hand, I definitely admired the craft and the skill that went into the production.  I admired the performances of both Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan.  The movie’s soundtrack is full of the best of Bernstein’s compositions, all performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.  The movie looked wonderful and it sounded wonderful but it also felt strangely hollow.  Watching it, I realized that the movie really didn’t know what it wanted to say about Bernstein and Felecia.  The movie was so consumed with technical perfection that the emotions of the story sometimes felt rather remote.  It was a film about Leonard Bernstein that, despite Cooper’s strong performance, failed to really give us a reason to care about Bernstein.  Maestro is a film that you admire while you watch it but it doesn’t really stick with you afterwards.  It’s the epitome of Oscar bait.

Maestro did not win Cooper any Oscars, though it did bring some nominations.  The film was also nominated for Best Picture but it lost to Oppenheimer.  That said, I’m looking forward to the year when Bradley Cooper does finally win his Oscar and hopefully, he’ll win it for a film that’s more like the emotion-filled A Star Is Born than the rather detached Maestro.  He’s one of my favorite actors and he’s due.

Going Berserk (1983, directed by David Steinberg)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

John Bourgignon (John Candy) is a man of many talents.  He’s a limo driver.  He’s a drummer.  He is an occasional actor, having starred in Kung Fu U. for his friend, director Sal DiPasquale (Eugene Levy).  John is also improbably engaged to Nancy Reece (Alley Mills), the daughter of Congressman and presidential candidate Ed Reese (Pat Hingle).  As the wedding approaches, John deals with a number of things.  He chauffeurs around a group of Spanish Beatles impersonators.  He finds himself handcuffed to a fugitive (Ernie Hudson) who dies at an inopportune time.  A cult leader (Richard Libertini) attempts to brainwash John into assassinating Ed, though the process might just turn John into a “schmuck.”

Going Berserk was John Candy’s first lead feature role and it was obviously designed to play to Candy’s popularity as one of the stars of SCTV.  Going Berserk doesn’t gave a plot as much as it’s a collection of skits, some of which work better than others but all of which are held together by Candy’s comedic timing and amiable presence.  Going Berserk is disjointed and wildly uneven but it’s also frequently funny and that is a testament to Candy’s talent.  Even an overlong parody of The Blue Lagoon raises a smile because John Candy is just so committed to playing out the joke.

Going Berserk also features several familiar faces, like Richard Libertini, Pat Hingle, Ernie Hudson, Dixie Carter, Kurtwood Smith, Paul Dooley, and two of Candy’s SCTV co-stars, Eugene Levy and Joe Flaherty.  I especially liked Levy’s performance as the sleazy director who blackmails his way into filming the wedding.  Going Berserk was frequently stupid but, more often than not, it made me laugh.

I Watched A Winner Never Quits (1986, dir. by Mel Damski)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

In 1945, Peter Gray made history when he became the first one-armed major league baseball player.  Gray grew up in poverty in Pennsylvania.  His father was a miner and Peter was one of five children.  He was only seven years old when he lost his right arm in a wagon accident but he loved baseball and he wasn’t going to let his disability keep him from playing.  He learned how to bat and catch and throw with his left hand.  He quit school when he was thirteen and worked for a while as waterboy while playing baseball in the local leagues.  Eventually, he made his way up to the minor leagues and, in 1945, he was called up to the majors.  He played one season for the St. Louis Browns.

The media loved the story of the one-armed baseball player but Peter always said that he resented feeling like he was being put on display whenever he took the field.  He was a competitive outfielder who could catch a ball, remove his glove, and then throw the ball to the infield just as quickly as anyone with two hands.  As a hitter, he struggled because pitchers figured out early on that he couldn’t hit the breaking ball.  After the 1945 season, Peter was sent to back to the minors, where he spent the rest of his career.  Though Peter was known for being an angry player who resented anyone pointing out his disability, he still made time to visit amputees in military hospitals to show them that they could still find success and to encourage them to chase after their dreams.

Peter’s story was the basis of A Winner Never Quits, which I watched on YouTube this weekend.  It was a good baseball movie, starring Keith Carradine as Peter.  What I liked is that the movie didn’t make him into a saint.  Carradine played Peter as being angry and with a definite chip on his shoulder.  Peter had every right to be angry and I’m glad the movie acknowledged that.  In both the movie and in real life, Peter was worried that he was just being treated as a sideshow.  In the movie, his attitude improves when he meets a young boy who recently lost his arm and who looks up to Peter.  Peter remained a friend to the boy and his family for the rest of his life.  A Winner Never Quits is about pursuing what you love and never giving up.  That’s what baseball is all about.  A Winner Never Quits is a good and inspiring baseball movie that’s not just for the fans.

Film Review: Poor Little Rich Girl (dir by Andy Warhol)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Little Rich Girl (1965, dir by Andy Warhol)

In March of 1965, Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga, and Chuck Wein went to the New York City apartment of Edie Sedgwick and made a movie.  Edie Sedgwick, at that time, was a 22 year-old model who had been christened a “youthquaker” by Vogue.  She was also, for a year or so, the best-known member of Andy Warhol’s ensemble.  Of all the so-called superstars that spent time with Warhol and appeared in his films, Edie was the one who actually was a star.

The film opens with Edie waking up, walking around her bedroom, smoking a cigarette, popping pills, exercising, and lounging in bed.  (That’s pretty much my morning routine too, except for the cigarettes.)  She doesn’t speak.  The only sound that we hear is a record being played in the background and the whirring of Warhol’s camera.  Because of a faulty lens, the first 30 minutes of Poor Little Rich Girl are out-of-focus.  We can see Sedgwick’s form as she moves and we can, for the most part, tell what she’s doing but we can’t see any exact details.  Her face is a blur and sometimes, her body seems to disappear into the walls of the room itself.  It’s a genuinely disconcerting effect, even if it was an accident on Warhol’s part.  Edie is there but she’s not there.  The blurry image seems to reflect an unfocused life.  Edie is the poor little rich girl of the title and indeed, she was known as a socialite before she even became a part of Warhol’s circle.  The blurriness indicates that she has everything but it can’t be seen.

After 30 minutes, the film comes into focus.  Clad in black underwear, Edie answers questions from Chuck Wein, who remains off-camera.  Sometimes, we can hear Chuck’s questions and sometimes, we can’t.  Our focus is on Edie’s often amused reaction to the questions, even more so than her actual answers.  Edie smokes a pipe and looks at herself in her mirror and she talks about how she blew her entire inheritance in just a manner of days.  She raids her closet and tries on clothes while Wein offers up his opinions.  Edie is living the ultimate fantasy of trying on different outfits while your gay best friend makes you laugh with his snarky comments.  Edie comes across as someone who is living in the present and not worrying about what’s going to happen in the future.  It’s only when she nervously smiles that we get hints of the inner turmoil that came to define her final years.  The camera loves Edie and, even appearing in what is basically a home movie, Edie has the screen presence of a star.  There was nothing false about Edie Sedgwick.

Edie Sedgwick, Chuck Wein, and Andy Warhol

Watching the film today, of course, it’s hard not to feel a bit sad at the sight of a happy Edie Sedgwick.  While Edie would become an underground star as a result of her association with Andy Warhol and his films, their friendship ended when Edie tried to establish a career outside of Warhol’s films.  Edie’s own struggle with drugs and her mental health sabotaged her career and she died at the age of 28.  I first read George Plimpton’s biography of Edie Sedgwick when I was sixteen and I immediately felt a strong connection to her and her tragic story, so much so that I was actually relieved when I made it to my 29th birthday.  Though most people ultimately see Edie Sedgwick as being a tragic figure, I prefer to remember Edie as she appeared in the second half of Poor Little Rich Girl, happy and in focus.

Ghosts of Sundance Past: Waiting For The Moon (dir by Jill Godmilow)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Sundance Film Festival is currently underway in Utah.  For the next few days, I’ll be taking a look at some of the films that have previously won awards at Sundance.

First released in 1987, Waiting For The Moon is a lowkey and fictionalized account of the relationship between Gertrude Stein (Linda Bassett) and Alice B. Toklas (Linda Hunt).

The film takes place in 1936, almost entirely at the home that Stein and Toklas shared in France.  Back in the years immediately following World War I, their home was a stopping spot for almost every writer who no longer felt at home in the conventional world.  It was the place where the members of the so-called Lost Generation met to socialize and discuss their art.  (Ernest Hemingway memorably wrote about visiting Stein and Toklas in A Moveable Feast.)  However, Waiting For The Moon takes place long after those exciting years.  Gertrude and Alice are now living a rather comfortable and settled life.  Occasionally, someone will stop by.  Hemingway (played by Bruce McGill) shows up.  Picasso stops by for a visit, though we only hear him.  But, for the most part, the film focuses on Gertrude and Alice.  The film follows them as they bicker like the old married couple that they essentially are, even if society in 1936 wasn’t willing to acknowledge it.  Alice proofreads Gertrude’s latest writing.  Gertrude waits for word from her doctor.  They talk about old times and old friends.  At one point, an aspiring writer named Henry Hopper (Andrew McCarthy) pays the two women a visit and, for a day at least, it’s like old time.  Henry is earnest and idealistic and full of plans for the future.  Unfortunately, he’s also planning on fighting in the Spanish Civil War and it doesn’t take a genius to guess that probably won’t go well.  Indeed, we learn that several of Gertrude and Alice’s old acquaintances are now fighting and dying in the Spanish Civil War.  For the so-called Lost Generation, the battle against Franco is a chance to find themselves but students of history already know how the war is going to end.  For that matter, students of history will also realize that World War II is right around the corner.  (Needless to say, the film itself offers up not a hint of the controversy that would surround Stein’s activities during the Vichy regime,)

Waiting For The Moon is a deliberately paced film, which is a polite way of saying that it’s a bit on the slow side.  That said, the scenery is beautiful and both Linda Hunt and Linda Bassett give good performances as the film’s versions of Alice and Gertrude.  Bruce McGill steals the film as the blustery Hemingway.  I’m sure Ernest would have approved.  (Could Ernest Hemingway ever be played as being anything other than blustery?)  The film captures the daydream that I think captures the fancy of many aspiring writers, the idea of being in a place where your thoughts are the center of life and all of your friends understand what it’s like to be a creative soul.

Waiting For The Moon won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival.  It’s not an easy film to find.  On Amazon, a copy on DVD runs about $52.00.  I was fortunate enough to find a copy at Half-Price Books.

 

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Born On The Fourth of July (dir by Oliver Stone)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1989, having already won an Oscar for recreating his Vietnam experiences in Platoon, director Oliver Stone returned to the war with Born On The Fourth Of July.

Based on the memoir of anti-war activist Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July stars Tom Cruise as Kovic.  When we first meet Kovic, he’s growing up on Long Island in the 50s and 60s.  He’s a clean-cut kid from a nice family.  He’s on the school wrestling team and he’s got a lot of friends.  When he was just 15, he heard John F. Kennedy telling people to ask what they can do for their country and he was inspired.  He decided he wanted to join the Marines, despite the fact that his father (Raymond J. Barry) was still haunted by the combat that he saw in World War II.  (In one of the film’s better scenes, a young Kovic notices that the elderly veterans marching in the Independence Day parade still flinch whenever they hear a firecracker.)  He enlists in the Marines after listening to a patriotic speech from a recruiter (played by Tom Berenger).  Ron runs through the rain to attend his prom and has one dance with Donna (Kyra Sedgwick), on whom he’s always had a crush.  There’s nothing subtle about the way that Stone portrays Kovic’s childhood.  In fact, one might argue that it’s a bit too idealized.  But Stone knows what he’s doing.  The wholesomenss of Kovic’s childhood leaves neither him nor the viewer prepared for what’s going to happen in Vietnam.

Vietnam turns out not to be the grand and patriotic adventure that Kovic thought it would be.  After Sgt. Kovic accidentally shoots one of his own men in a firefight, he is ordered to keep quiet about the incident.  After he is wounded and paralyzed in another firefight, Kovic ends up in a Hellish VA hospital, surrounded by men who will never fully recover from their mental and physical wounds.  Kovic is eventually returns home in wheelchair.  The film then follows Kovic as he goes from defending the war in Vietnam to eventually turning against both the war and the government.  At one point, he ends up with a group of disabled vets in Mexico and there’s a memorable scene where he and another paraplegic (Willem Dafoe) attempt to fight despite having fallen out of their chairs.  Eventually, Kovic returns to America and turns his anger into activism.

There’s nothing subtle about Born On The Fourth Of July.  It’s a loud and angry film and Oliver Stone directs with a heavy-hand.  Like a lot of Stone’s films, it overwhelms the viewer on a first viewing and it’s only during subsequent viewings that one becomes aware of just how manipulative the film is.  Tom Cruise gives a good performance as Ron Kovic but his transformation into a long-haired, profane drunk still feels as if it happens a bit too abruptly.  A good deal of the film centers on Kovic’s guilt about accidentally killing one of his men but the scene where he goes to the soldier’s family and asks them for forgiveness didn’t quite work for me.  If anything, Kovic came across as being rather self-centered as he robs the man’s mother and father of the belief that their son had at least died heroically in combat as opposed to having been shot by his own sergeant.  Did Kovic’s need to absolve himself really give him the right to cause this family more pain?  Born on the Fourth Of July is an effective work of agitprop.  On the first viewing, you’ll want to join Kovic in denouncing the military and demanding peace.  On the second viewing, you’ll still sympathize with Kovic while also realizing that he really owes both his mother and father an apology for taking out his anger on them.  By the third viewing, you’ll be kind of like, “Wow, I feel bad for this guy but he’s still kind of a jerk.”  That said, when it comes to making an effective political film, Adam McKay could definitely take some lessons from Oliver Stone.  Born On The Fourth of July is at its best when it simply captures the feeling of living in turmoil and discovering that the world is not as simple a place as you once believed.  As idealized as the film’s presentation of Kovic’s childhood may be, anyone who has ever felt nostalgia for an earlier and simpler world will be able to relate.

Oliver Stone won his second Best Director Oscar for Born On The Fourth Of July.  The film itself lost Best Picture to far more genteel version of the past, Driving Miss Daisy.

 

 

 

Neighbors (1981, directed by John G. Avildsen)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Uptight suburbanite Earl Keese (John Belushi) is paranoid about his new neighbors, Vic (Dan Aykroyd) and Ramona (Cathy Moriarty).  Ramona continually tries to seduce Earl (and everyone else) while Vic is loud and obnoxious, always telling off-color jokes and insinuating that Earl is less of a man than he is.  Earl thinks that there’s something mentally wrong with Vic but Earl’s wife and daughter (played respectively by Kathryn Walker and Lauren-Marie Taylor) love both Vic and Ramona.  Over the course of one very long night and morning, Earl grows more and more suspicious even as he starts to feel truly alive for the first time in several years.

Based on a novel by Thomas Berger, Neighbors is an unfortunate attempt at dark comedy that also turned out to be the final film appearance of John Belushi.  It’s appropriate that Belushi’s final film featured him with his comedic partner and best friend, Dan Aykroyd, though I think most of their fans would rather remember them for The Blues Brothers than Neighbors.  Originally, Aykroyd was cast as Earl while Belushi was meant to play Vic but the two actors decided to switch roles at the last minute.  It takes a while to get used to seeing Belushi as an uptight character who worries about the neighbor’s dog digging up his flower garden but Belushi actually does give a good performance as Earl, revealing that he had more range as an actor that most suspected.  Aykroyd and Moriarty also give good performances, though Aykroyd’s performance is not as much a departure as Belushi’s.  Earl is an amiable eccentric with several out-there beliefs, which also sounds like a good description of Dan Aykroyd.

Why, despite the talented cast, does Neighbors fail?  Director John G. Avildsen was the wrong choice to direct the film.  From the first shot of Earl and Vic’s two houses sitting on a hill and looking like left-over sets from The Addams Family, Avildsen directs in a cartoonish manner that is not appropriate for a comedy-of-manners.  The book’s humor comes from Earl becoming progressively more and more unstable but, in the movie, Earl seems to be unhinged from the start.  Bill Conti’s musical score drives him every point with a thudding obviousness.  Conti’s style was perfect for the soaring anthems of Rocky but not for a comedy like Neighbors.

Unfortunately, this would be Belushi’s final film.  Neighbors was released in December of 1981.  John Belushi died four months later.

Film Review: The Cardinal (dir by Otto Preminger)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1963 film, The Cardinal, opens with an Irish-American priest named Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tyron) being instituted as a cardinal.

In a series of flashbacks, we see everything that led to this moment.  Stephen starts out as an overly ambitious and somewhat didactic priest who, over the years, is taught to be humble by a series of tragedies and mentors.  It’s a sprawling story, one that encompasses the first half of the 20th Century and, as he did with both Exodus and Advice and Consent, Preminger tells his story through the presence of several familiar faces.  Director John Huston plays the cardinal who takes an early interest in Stephen’s career.  Burgess Meredith plays a priest with MS who teaches Stephen about the importance of remaining humble and thankful.  When Stephen is in Europe, Romy Schneider plays the woman for whom he momentarily considers abandoning his vows.  When Stephen is assigned to the American South, Ossie Davis plays the priest and civil rights activist who teaches Stephen about the importance of standing up for those being oppressed.  In the days leading up to World War II, Stephen is sent to Austria to try to keep the local clergy from allying with the invading Nazis.  Stephen also deals with his own family drama, as his sister (Carol Lynley) runs away from home after Stephen counsels her not to marry a good Jewish man named Benny (John Saxon) unless Benny can be convinced the convert to Catholicism.  Later, when his sister becomes pregnant and Stephen is told that she’ll die unless she has an abortion, Stephen is forced to choose between his own feelings and teachings of the Church.  Along the way, performers like Dorothy Gish, Cecil Kellaway, Chill Wills, Raf Vallone, Jill Haworth, Maggie McNamara, Arthur Hunnicut, and Robert Morse all make appearances.

All of the familiar faces in the cast are used to support Tom Tryon and Tryon needs all the support that he can get.  Despite Otto Preminger’s attempts to make Tom Tyron into a star, Tryon eventually retired from acting and found far more success as a writer of the type of fiction that Stephen Fermoyle probably would have condemned as blasphemous.  Tryon gives a stiff and unconvincing performance in The Cardinal.  The entire film depends on Tryon’s ability to get us to like Stephen, even when he’s being self-righteous or when he’s full of self-pity and, unfortunately, Tryon’s stiff performance makes him into the epitome of the type of priest that everyone dreads having to deal with.  Tryon gives such a boring performance that he’s overshadowed by the rest of the cast.  I spent the movie wishing that it would have spent more time with John Saxon and Burgess Meredith, both of whom give interesting and lively performances.

The Cardinal is a long and rather self-important film.  The same can be said of many of Preminger’s films in the 60s but Exodus benefitted from the movie star glamour of Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint and Advice and Consent was saved by an intelligent script.  The Cardinal, on the other hand, is a bit draggy and makes many of the same mistakes that many secular films make when they try to portray Catholicism.  Oddly enough, The Cardinal received more Oscar nominations than either Exodus or Advice and Consent.  Indeed, Preminger was even nominated for Best Director for his rather uninspired work here.  Considering the number of good films for which Preminger was not nominated (Anatomy of a Murder comes to mind), it’s a bit odd that The Cardinal was the film for which he was nominated.  (Of course, in 1944, the Academy got it right by nominating Preminger for his direction of Laura.)  The Cardinal is largely forgettable, though interesting as a type of self-consciously “big” films that the studios were churning out in the 60s in order to compete with television and the counterculture.

Film Review: Exodus (dir by Otto Preminger)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1960 and based on a novel by Leon Uris, Otto Preminger’s Exodous is two films in one.

The first half of the film takes place in Cyprus in the days immediately following World War II.  A young war widow named Kitty (Eva Marie Saint) is sightseeing when she learns of the Karaolos Internment Camp, where the British are interning thousands of Jewish refugees who demand to be allowed to go to the land that will eventually become the State of Israel.  Kitty visits with General Sutherland (Ralph Richardson), who oversees the camp and who is rumored to secretly be Jewish because of his relatively benevolent attitude towards the internees.  Disgusted by the anti-Semitism displayed by many of the British officers (one of whom is played by Kennedy in-law Peter Lawford), Kitty volunteers at the camp and learns about the Holocaust from those who survived it.  She also meets Ari Ben Caanan (Paul Newman), a former officer in the British army.  Ari manages to get control of a cargo ship, one that is renamed Exodus.  Six hundred refugees stage a hunger strike, vowing that they will willingly starve to death rather than be returned to Europe.

The second part of Exodus takes place in what will become the modern State of Israel.  It follows Ari, Kitty, and several of the passengers of the Exodus as they adjust to life and continue to fight for a land of their own, despite the opposition of the British and much of the rest of the world.  Karen (Jill Haworth) is a young woman who searches for her father, a brilliant man who has been driven into a nearly catatonic state by the horrors of the Holocaust.  Dov Landau (Sal Mineo) is an explosives expert who survived Auschwitz as a Sonderkommando and who was repeatedly raped by the guards at the camp.  Dov joins the Irgun, a paramilitary organization that the British consider to be terrorists.  Leading the Irgun is Ari’s uncle, Akiva (David Opatoshu), and Dov soon finds himself being targeted by both the British and the Arabs who, despite the moderating efforts of men like Taha (John Derek, who would later direct Ghosts Can’t Do It), want to violently force the Jews out of the land.

Legend has it that, after a private screening on Exodus, comedian Mort Sahl turned to director Otto Preminger and said, “Otto, let my people go.”  And it’s true that Exodus is a very long film.  Preminger, who started out making film noirs like Laura, spent the latter part of his career making “important” epics and, like many Golden Age directors struggling to compete with television and the 60s counterculture, he tended to make long, star-studded films that dealt with current events and which pushed the envelope just enough to be controversial without actually being radical.  However, I would argue that the three-hour running time of Exodus is justified.  To understand why Ari, Dov, Karen, and the other passengers of the Exodus would rather risk their lives by staying in what will become the State of Israel, one has to understand both what they went through to get there and also the anti-Semitism that they faced even in post-World War II Europe.  If Exodus were made today, it would be a mini-series.  Since it was made in 1960, it was instead a 3-hour film with an intermission.

Exodus holds up relatively well, with the sprawling action anchored by the presence of a cast of familiar faces.  Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint bring a good deal of movie star glamour to scenes that would have otherwise just been dry exposition.  The film’s heart truly belongs to Jill Haworth and Sal Mineo, both of whom bring two life characters who have very differing views of the world.  Karen remains an optimist, one who is convinced that people can live together.  Dov, fueled by his own guilt and anger, has no room for negotiations and compromises.  Mineo received his second and last Oscar nomination for his performance in Exodus, though he lost to Peter Ustinov’s showy turn in Spartacus.  Exodus itself was clearly made with a hope for Oscar glory.  While Exodus did pick up a handful of nominations, it was left out of the five movie Best Picture slate.  The Academy only had room for one historical epic and they went for John Wayne’s The Alamo.  The eventual winner was The Apartment, the best of the nominated films.  (Indeed, even if Exodus had taken the Alamo’s spot, The Apartment would still be the best of the nominees.)  The Oscars aside, Exodus remains a good example of the type of epic filmmaking that once defined the Hollywood studios.