Exodus (1960)
(Otto Preminger, US 1960, 208 min., 35mm)
Paul Newman stars as Ari Ben Canaan, an agent of Haganah in Mandate Palestine. Ari guides a ship full of Jewish refugees to Palestine on the eve of the United Nations vote in 1947, despite British blockades. On the ship, he meets and falls in love with Kitty Fremont (Eva Marie Saint), a widowed American nurse rudderless in the wake of World War II.
In between Dalton Trumbo’s completing the script for Spartacus and receiving credit for it, Otto Preminger contracted Trumbo to rewrite the adaptation of the Leon Uris novel Exodus. They worked on it for a month straight, over the December holidays of 1959. In January 1960, Preminger told a reporter from the New York Times that Trumbo had written the script for Exodus and would receive full credit, also referring to Trumbo’s work on Roman Holiday and Spartacus. Spartacus and Exodus were released within three months of each other in 1960 and, although there was some picketing for each, both films went on to become great successes.