The Jewish Experience on Film: TCM beginning at 8 P.M. Tuesdays This week’s themes are Israeli Classics and Jewish Homeland

Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (1955) At the time of Statehood and the consequent fighting, a disparate group of Israeli soldiers is charged with taking and holding Hill 24. When a ceasefire is called, whoever has the hill gets to keep it. With an international cast, this first movie to come out of , probably couldn't have hoped to boldly and candidly drive a conversation about ancient divides in the Holy Land without upsetting a great many people. Still, what it does provide, however sanitized, is a taut war thriller about a group of soldiers fighting for what they believe in. Hill 24 Doesn't Answer is a good first effort for the Israeli film industry and succeeds, while it chooses to avoid a hard conversation in favor of a celebration of courage and perseverance.

Sallah (1964) Sallah Shabati and his family have come to Israel in 1949 from Yemen. The newly arrived Yemeni immigrant starts to wonder if immigrating was such a good idea. He wants to live in a nice, clean apartment and have a comfortable life, but he’s not willing to work for it. When things turn out well for the family, it's because Sallah got better at wheeling and dealing, not because he saw the error of his ways and started doing his fair share for society. This film is a mildly humorous, gently nostalgic tour of a nation with modest resources at the moment but great expectations for the future.It was well received, sharing a Golden Globe with other international films. Topol (Fiddler on the Roof) stars.

A Sword in the Desert Eleven years before Otto Preminger dramatized the birth of modern Israel in Exodus (1960), Universal- International produced this low-budget story, "torn from the headlines," about the Middle East crisis. Although the plot is formulaic, reading like Casablanca (1942) in the Holy Land, the 1949 film was the first from Hollywood to offer a picture of what was going on as European , most of them refugees from World War II's concentration camps, sought a new homeland in a region set aside by the British as the Palestine Mandate. Set in 1947 before the U.N. vote to establish Israel, the film features a ship’s captain who is involved in smuggling Jews into British occupied Palestine. He is so impressed by the and the dedication of immigrants to the land that he becomes one of the many non-Jews who worked for the formation of the State of Israel.

Exodus (1960) Based on the best-selling novel by Leon Uris, the film focuses on the birth of Israel after World War II. It follows Ari Ben Canaan, an Israeli resistance leader, as he tries to help a group of 600 Jewish immigrants escape British-blocked Cypress for Palestine. Director Otto Preminger’s non-compromising nature was probably well suited to this particular production. There were arguments against the film by governing heads of Israel where it was shot on location, as well as leaders of terrorist groups, so Preminger had to face external pressure as well as criticism from within the production. In his autobiography, Preminger said, "I think that my picture...is much closer to the truth, and to the historic facts, than is the book. It also avoids propaganda. It's an American picture, after all, that tries to tell the story, giving both sides a chance to plead their case." Even though critics thought the movie too long, audiences loved it. It won an Academy Award for best score and featured an all-star cast.

Comments are adapted from articles about the films. Complete articles are available at http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/1027645|1027646/The-Projected-Image-The-Jewish- Experience-on-Film.html