Plot
In Palestine shortly before the end of the British mandate, the Haganah has learnt that a former German tank commander, General Gustav Schiller (Hans Verner), is teaching the Arabs battle tactics, but they are unable to locate him. Then they learn of the existence of his Jewish former wife, Judith Auerbach Schiller (Sophia Loren), and arrange for her to be smuggled into Palestine via the port of Haifa. She is placed in the care of Aaron Stein (Peter Finch), a Haganah commander, at a kibbutz.
Schiller abandoned his wife during the war and took away their son. She was then sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where she was forced to serve in an officers' brothel, but survived.
Judith does not take kindly to the rigours of kibbutz life, and is unable to tell them anything about Schiller, but Stein hopes that she can at least identify him. He "suggests" that she ask the local army commander, Major Lawton (Jack Hawkins), to help her. Judith travels to Haifa to see him and pleads with him to hand over the file on Schiller - which he eventually does. It turns out that Schiller was last known to be in Damascus, Syria.
Judith, Stein and a colleague are smuggled into Damascus and after days of searching, they find Schiller. As they are about to capture him, Judith shoots and wounds him. Schiller is smuggled back to Palestine and interrogated, but he refuses to give any information. Left alone with Judith, he pleads for mercy. But as the kibbutz comes under attack by Arab forces, he finally reveals the battle plans, and also tells Judith that he knows the whereabouts of their son. The room in which he is being kept is bombed and Schiller is killed.
Read more about this topic: Judith (1966 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
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—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)