ViewGuide

Created Dec 23, 2012 01:48AM PST • Edited Oct 13, 2023 07:18PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Judith features Gentile moviestars playing Jewish freedom fighters during Israel’s War of Independence. It’s amazing how glamorous a story centered on early kibbutz life at the end of the British Mandate can be.

   To that end, Judith is a fabulous Sophia Loren movie. The great Loren stars as the title character, natch, an Austrian Jewess who looks neither Austrian or Jewish. Who cares. Glad to have her as a cinematic M.O.T.

   Thus the Israeli War of Independence gets major moviestar treatment. Good thing, since the story’s extreme drama verges on melodrama, with the moviestar-turn extraordinaire keeping it from running off the rails. Nothwithstanding a fictionalized story, Judith’s milieu of tattooed Holocaust survivors, repressive British troops, hostile Arabs and self-reliant kibbutznicks was real. All in all, it’s an alluring history lesson.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Sophia’s so fine she still blows my mind. By way of comparison, Angelina Jolie – the hottest 21st century moviestar – could be forgiven for wishing she was Sophia Loren beautiful. In Judith, Loren demonstrates the ability to remain sympathetic while operating as an unapologetic diva who uses her preternatural sexuality as a weapon. Perhaps this duality is because she’s playing an overwhelmingly sympathetic character, or perhaps it’s because I’m smitten, but I choose to think it’s because she’s the rare screen siren who radiates an inner beauty along with her visible pulchritude, and because she’s an excellent actress.

   Peter Finch impresses as a Haganah freedom fighter and early Kibbutznik, even if he’s about as Jewish as a British ham. His rough-hewn, world-weary charisma fully captures the back-to-the-land self-reliance that was characteristic of those who built the young Israeli state.

   Peter Hawkins also impresses as a sympathetic British Army Major. Four years earlier, Hawkins played British General Allenby in Lawrence of Arabia. IOW, Britain’s onetime control of the Middle East was very good for Hawkins’ acting career.

   Other notables include Hans Werner as a Nazi General, plus quite a few Israelis as kibbutznics and Haganah soldiers.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Sol Kaplan’s often lighthearted music underlying John Michael Hayes’ Hitchcockian dialog – as delivered by Sophia Loren – makes Judith as charming as a Holocaust survivor film can be.

    Hayes is the man who wrote Rear Window. Say no more. Well say this, he based Judith on a Lawrence Durrell story – he of the International Lawrence Durrell Society. Cinematic literary pedigrees get no better.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

    Daniel Mann’s workmanlike direction is somewhat understandable given that Judith looks to have been filmed on location, which was still novel in `66, let alone in Israel.

12. Play Great 4.0

    “I’m a woman, though you wouldn’t know it in these clothes,” declares Sophia’s Judith after donning kibbutz fieldwork togs. Now that’s a line.

    “My father built tractors. I know all about it,” purrs Sophia’s Judith to a kibbutz mechanic, showing that screenwriter John Michael Hayes learned well from Hitchcock how to have women speak alluringly.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    Kibbutz clothes, dancing and field work are made vivid. The little blue hats? כן

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.5

    The sexual titillation comes from a thirtysomething Sophia Loren at her haughty sexiest, a sex machine even without having sex.

    The brutal violence comes from a well executed – albeit dated – depiction of war violence.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Brutal 3.0

19. Rudeness Salty 2.0

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    The Israeli War of Independence is well shown, along with the British Army enforcing the British Mandate.

    My how times have changed. Judith came out the year before the Six Day War, back when Israel was hip throughout the West. OTOH, 21st century moral confusion equating Westerners in Israel as akin to Jewish Napoleons would preclude such a movie being made today, outside of Israel herself that is. Pity.

    On a personal note, Judith came out in ‘66, about when I began Hebrew School, yet somehow I made it past 50 before seeing it. Pity. Imagine how Sophia’s Judith could have fired a young man’s imagination.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.7

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0