Exodus

Exodus is a 1960 American drama set in the years surrounding the founding of the State of Israel. It follows Ari Ben Canaan, a member of the Jewish paramilitary group Haganah, as he works to bring hundreds of Jewish refugees held by the British on Cyprus to Palestine aboard a ship called the Exodus. The British refuse the ship passage, and Ari must find a way to force the issue. Alongside this effort, the film follows the wider struggle over the creation of Israel and the war that follows its establishment, and the divisions among those fighting for a homeland over how far they are willing to go.

Otto Preminger directed and produced the film, from a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. It was the eleventh of the sixteen films Preminger directed, coming after Anatomy of a Murder and before Advise & Consent. Paul Newman plays Ari Ben Canaan, with Eva Marie Saint as the American nurse Kitty Fremont, Ralph Richardson as General Sutherland, Peter Lawford as Major Caldwell, Lee J. Cobb as Barak Ben Canaan and Sal Mineo as Dov Landau, among a credited cast of thirty-four. Running over three hours, it was mounted on a budget of about four million dollars and returned roughly nineteen million worldwide.

Audience scores are moderate and closely matched, with a 6.7 rating on IMDb across some thirteen thousand votes and the same figure on TMDB, while the critics' rating stands slightly lower at 6.5 from seventeen reviews.