Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Cast a Giant Shadow Blu-ray Movie Review

Do cartoon characters cast shadows?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 8, 2014

Quick: name a big budget 1960s American film about the founding of the State of Israel based on a best selling book, a film with an all star cast and a main character played by a blue eyed movie icon who just so happens to be Jewish himself. Easy, right? Exodus, Otto Preminger’s Oscar winning opus based on the big Leon Uris blockbuster which provided Paul Newman one of his most memorable roles. Interestingly, Leon Uris himself provided a big pull quote emblazoned across one edition of the somewhat less remembered Cast a Giant Shadow, a biographical opus by Ted Berkman which appeared a couple of years after the film version of Exodus hit theaters worldwide. It took until 1966 for Cast a Giant Shadow to make it to the screen itself, and the six years between Exodus and this film may have been just enough time for audience interest to wane in the subject, for this Kirk Douglas vehicle never really took off at the box office and is still largely unremembered to this day. It may seem odd, then, that Cast a Giant Shadow is making its debut on Blu-ray before Exodus, especially when Exodus was such an international hit and (for collectors, anyway) such a horrible experience on DVD (truly one of the worst “big” catalog releases in that format, rife with all sorts of anomalies like moiré and aliasing). It may seem even odder when it becomes obvious that despite Exodus’ own lumbering qualities, it at least managed to work up a decent amount of emotional connection to its subject, while Cast a Giant Shadow seems to be observing one of the epochal moments in 20th century— and perhaps human—history from a comfortable distance. This film shares a penchant with another movie centered on a famous Jew in the Holy Land, George Stevens’ 1965 behemoth Biblical spectacle The Greatest Story Ever Told. In both of these films, real historical events are interrupted by an almost comical set of star cameos (with none other than John Wayne doing similar service in both films).

Unlike Exodus, which posited a bunch of fictional characters within a basically historically true setting (with certain artistic liberties), Cast a Giant Shadow’s central character is real life American Colonel Mickey Marcus (Kirk Douglas). In what might seem to be a bit of political (and/or religious) incorrectness, considering the film’s focus on Jews and their plight, the film starts during the mad Christmas shopping rush at Macy’s during 1947. Marcus is enjoying a successful legal practice in New York when he’s approached one day by an Israeli operative named Saphir (James Donald) and begged to come help the nascent Israeli army. (In yet another boneheaded piece of screenwriting, Saphir tells Marcus that Israeli children don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore. While assimilated Jews like yours truly may indeed have grown up with Santa Claus in their childhoods, my hunch is very few Israeli kids in 1947 would have been hanging stockings on mantles or engaging in any other celebratory activities related to a Christian holiday.)

A certain clunkiness ensues when Marcus goes home to be confronted by his wife Emma (Angie Dickinson), who is not pleased that so soon after being demobbed from World War II Marcus has agreed to go to Palestine to help the nascent Israeli uprising. That introduces a curious flashback to World War II (told from Emma’s viewpoint, when she wasn’t even there) where Marcus’ impetuous tendencies are detailed in the first of several vignettes featuring the generically named General (John Wayne). (Wayne’s Batjac Productions is one of the entities behind the film, and Wayne’s son Michael is a producer.)

Once Marcus arrives in Palestine, the real soap operatic content begins once he’s set up with a gorgeous freedom fighter named Magda (Senta Berger). In some rather shockingly straightforward dialogue (at least for 1966), Magda cuts to the chase and asks Marcus if he’s getting enough sex at home and then confesses that her husband is not very good in bed. That sets up a dialectic in the film where Marcus repeatedly ping pongs (emotionally, if not physically) between Emma and Magda. Marcus also has to come to terms with his own Jewish identity (he self-identifies being American as his “religion” in an early scene in the film) while also dealing with a number of contentious Jews (including Yul Brynner as a resistance leader).

There are a number of problems afflicting Cast a Giant Shadow, but the main one can probably be shorthanded as the film’s tendency to fictionalize elements that don’t really need fictionalizing. I have no idea if Marcus’ dalliances with the gorgeous freedom fighter have any basis in truth (a cursory look over online biographical information doesn’t seem to indicate anything like this), but the decision to interject star cameos like John Wayne and (even stranger) Frank Sinatra into the film, playing no one “identifiable”, is just plain odd. This tendency is further exacerbated by the film’s truly bizarre decision to portray obvious real life figures like David Ben Gurion as fictionalized versions of themselves (in this case a character hilariously named Jacob Zion, played by Luther Adler). This cheapens the story, and seemingly divorces it from the one thing that should set this film apart from Exodus—it’s supposed to be about real people.

Writer-director Melville Shavelson (who wrote a book about his experience shooting the film called How to Make a Jewish Movie) might seem like an odd choice to pen and helm Cast a Giant Shadow. Shavelson was probably best known for his lightweight fluff, including a number of collaborations with Bob Hope. Perhaps surprisingly, he manages to invest Cast a Giant Shadow with a certain amount of epic sweep, and despite the film’s general ambience of artificiality, he extracts good to excellent performances from a large and colorful cast. There are also some good snippets scattered throughout the film, including a nicely done scene that shows an Arab kid munching on a sandwich, setting it down to fire on some Jews, and then returning to his food as if nothing had happened. It's a telling little vignette which makes a good point about how "casual" the contentious relationship between Jews and Arabs seems fated to be. Marcus’ story is a fascinating one, and certainly deserves more renown by the American public at large (he is still lionized to this day in Israel). Unfortunately, Cast a Giant Shadow ends up trivializing its subject, casting a rather paltry shadow in the long run.

Cast a Giant Shadow Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cast a Giant Shadow is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber Studio Classics with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. While the elements utilized for this transfer are in generally very good condition, there has been some very minor fading, leading to a just slightly brown look (especially with regard to flesh tones) some of the time. Some colors can still look quite striking, with the clear blue skies being a notable example, but reds are a little rusty and the overall look here is just slightly on the pallid side. Aldo Tonti's cinematography is one of the chief allures of this film, and the exterior location work is often pretty stunning, with great depth of field and good resolution of busy patterns like huge fields of waving wheat. There are a couple of unusually soft sequences, but at least one of them, a showdown on a beach, seems to have been lensed with a diffusion filter (see screenshots 12 and 13). Contrast is generally very strong as well, though some dimly lit scenes suffer from a lack of significant shadow detail.

Cast a Giant Shadow Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While there's nothing inherently wrong with Cast a Giant Shadow's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono mix, I've slightly downgraded the score here due to persistent sync issues. These are very slight (a fraction of a second), but once you've started noticing them, they're all but impossible to ignore. Lip movements just don't quite match up with dialogue throughout the entire film. I had the old DVD of this film many years ago and do not overtly recall this being an issue with that release (I no longer own it, and so could not check). This may not bother some (again, it is very minor), and otherwise this track is quite strong, offering good reproduction across all frequencies, with Elmer Bernstein's stirring score sounding great and sound effects like gunshots and explosions reverberating with quite a bit of force. Dialogue is also cleanly and clearly presented.

Cast a Giant Shadow Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080i; 3:40)

Cast a Giant Shadow Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cast a Giant Shadow may have been made with the noblest of intentions, but wrongheaded attempts to introduce needless melodrama and a similar decision to not stick (at least mostly) to facts deprives this film of anything other than passing impact. Douglas is quite convincing as Marcus, and Berger is certainly an eyeful. The film has solid production values all around, and fans of the stars may find enough here to warrant a purchase. Technical merits here aren't perfect, but are generally well above average. Recommended.