Design By The-Studio
One of the most important posters created by Emanuel Cahana was the one designed for the 1962 American movie Exodus, by the well-known director and producer Otto Preminger. His design incorporated the image of upheld hands holding a weapon (a familiar symbol of revolution), which appeared in the original poster designed in the United States by Saul Bass. Cahana, who was himself an immigrant newly arrived in Israel on a boat from Romania, added to the poster an image of a ship and masses of people struggling against the sea waves, thus celebrating the heroic stories of clandestine immigration woven into the history of the Israeli state.
The visual language of the original poster is universal, trying the story of the ship Exodus to heroic stories unfolding in other place and times. By contrast, Emanuel Cahana’s poster tells the hegemonic Israeli story, with the image of the ship representing the political struggle of the Zionist movement against the British Mandate authorities. In this poster, as in additional f posters for Israeli films, he made use of iconic Zionist images, which were fixed in collective memory as part of the nation-building story, and were anchored in collective consciousness by means of posters, albums, news photographs and additional propaganda materials. Although the movie was an American production, it was largely filmed in Israel, with the participation of Israeli actors including Dan Ben Amotz, Shmuel Segal and Esther Ofarim. To this day, it is considered a milestone in the history of Israeli cinema, having provided Israelis with professional knowledge that was later applied in original Israeli film productions.
Although Exodus was a Hollywood melodrama that combined historical facts and fiction, the subject and the timing made it into a memorable event in Israeli history. While the movie was being filmed in Israel and Cypress, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion announced at the Knesset that Adolph Eichmann had been caught and was under arrest in Israel. About two months after the opening of his trial in Jerusalem, Exodus premiered at Israeli movie houses. Thus, while Israeli citizens tensely followed the shaking testimonies given in the course of the Eichmann Trial, which reconstructed the horrors of the Holocaust, Exodus transported them from the Valley of Death to the climax of the struggle for Israeli statehood, and they flocked to watch it en masse. The film was thus conscripted as part of the national liberation movement, which constructed a national mythology and promoted the myth of clandestine immigration and the theme of bravery during the Holocaust, in accordance with the needs of the nascent Israeli society. Exodus underscored the narrative of “rebirth from the ashes” that was fostered in post-independence Israel, while underscoring the connection between the pre-state Jewish community’s struggle for independence and the decision taken by Britain and the UN to terminate the British Mandate, divide Palestine and establish a Jewish state.
• This text is based on Batia Donner’s article “Movie Posters – Emanuel Cahana, Designer of Dreams,” which is included in a forthcoming book about the designer.