Exodus (1960)

5SPIKE, 11.55AM ★★★★

Otto Preminger’s big-budget adaptation of Leon Uris’s bestseller about the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 is an accomplished piece of film-making. A Jewish paramilitary smuggles more than 600 detained Holocaust survivors onto a cargo vessel and makes an illegal crossing to Palestine. Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint star with a script by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo.