Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Sexy Sophia is always worth watching (even when saddled with possibly the worst hairstyle of her career), and she is well-supported here by Peter Finch, Jack Hawkins and Hans Verner, but this is one of her lesser films. More than the entire first hour is all setup, and lacks tension. Things get a little more engaging in the last half hour, and the film does close with some well-staged epic-scale battle scenes. So it's not quite the BOMB Leonard Maltin classifies it as. But the ending leaves the story unfinished - were they naively hoping for a "Judith II"? **1/2 out of 4.

I really enjoyed this film, which was made around the time of Exodus, and covered a similar theme, that of desperate refugees from Europe trying to enter the British mandate of Palestine, and the Kibutzim trying to build their settlement. The location shots were excellent, as was the acting and the story was passable, although stretching credibility somewhat, but the casting of Sophia Loren in the lead role was totally wrong. To begin with, she was far too glamorous in her brief short shorts, tight blouses and full makeup. Not to mention the way she thrust out her ample bosom and exaggeratedly wiggled her bottom from side to side as she strutted. I did not know whether to laugh or groan when she waggled her way through the dining room as if her hip joints has become looseIn her first scene, Loren climbs out of the bottom of wooden shipping crate in which she and another woman have been concealed underneath a lathe for however long it took to ship from another country. The other woman has died, but Loren's make up and hair are perfect and she hasn't a drop of sweat on her. Not to mention the fact that the weight of the lathe would likely have broken through the false floor. Another time, she is smuggled into Syria by boat wearing a very smart spotless white suit and high heels. She then parades around a street market in Damascus in these clothes, sticking out like a sore thumb. Four days later she leaves Damascus still wearing the same impeccable suit, but this time with an injured man on a stretcher, with no indication of how they got him out of the market place. Both the arrival and departure from Damacus puzzled me as it appeared to be from a lake or river. How did they get from Haifa to Damascus in a boat? Don't even ask about her running around in all directions when the shooting started rather than taking cover as she was told to do. The film would have been much stronger if the character of Judith, who would have been in her 30's and a survivor of Dachau, should have been played by a veteran actress, preferably European with a world weary air and strong sex appeal, a woman who had suffered, seen it all and done it all, not a conventional glamor girl. Ingrid Bergman, Lily Palmer, Simone Signoret, Anouk Aimee, or Jeanne Moreau.

This movie is a vehicle for sex goddess Sophia Loren, while also trying to make her look like a "serious" actress. This aspect of the movie was only moderately interesting. But if you can ignore that, it is also an interesting look at the start of the nation of Israel and the war they had to immediately fight for survival. I enjoyed seeing how they prepared secretly for the war and the depiction of an espionage operation. The immediate attacks by the surrounding nations would have been terrifying if they hadn't thought about and prepared for this so strenuously. There was great loss of life but also great acts of courage. Peter Finch was great as an intense young Israeli leader, and Jack Hawkins was his usual personable, dapper self. The scenery and sets were good and believable.

I first saw Judith years ago on the big screen when it first came out and was blown away by both Sophia Loren's beauty and her performance as concentration camp survivor Judith Auerbach. Even among the nameless, faceless members of her faith in those camps Judith has a unique story to tell.For she was in fact the wife of Wehrmacht General Hans Verner who was given a choice by the Nazis his career or his Jewish wife. Verner disowned her and she was thrown into Dachau her daughter taken from her and presumed dead. She lived on hate to survive with only one mission, nail her ex-husband any way she can.But the Haganah in Palestine in the days just before the formation of Israel want Verner as well. He's rumored to be in Damascus teaching the Arabs the rudiments of tank warfare, Nazi blitzkrieg style. There aren't any good pictures of Verner and there is only one who can really identify him. Hence Loren is smuggled into Palestine from the refugee camps at Cyprus that we all know from Exodus. She's brought to a Kibbutz on the Syrian border in the care of Haganah commander Peter Finch. He's the one with the mission of getting Verner taken alive to extract information and they need Loren, but Loren has other ideas. Finch also takes an interest in Sophia personally, who wouldn't. Another who is taken with her is British Major Jack Hawkins in one of his last films before throat cancer claimed his larynx. He's a spit and polish army regular, but he turns out to have a streak of humanity in him that even he didn't realize.Judith kind of got lost between those other two great films about the founding of Israel, Exodus and Cast A Giant Shadow. It's been not broadcast for several years for inexplicable reasons and that's a pity because Sophia and the whole cast is wonderful.Judith more than either of the other two films shows a good deal more of life on the Kibbutz. Israeli actress Zaharira Harifai plays the camp doctor and more than anyone else awakens in Loren a feeling that she is among friends and that the new state of Israel will give her a home and she can make a unique contribution to its founding.Judith is not a film to be missed if it ever sees the light of day again. Demand TCM broadcast it.