Best Picture: "Gentleman's Agreement," 1947

Movie Stats:

Released 1947 (USA)

American, in English

Director – Elia Kazan

Stars – Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield

Plot Summary:

When journalist Philip Schuyler Green (Peck) is assigned to write an expose on anti-Semitism, he decides that the only way he can truly understand the issue is to pose as a Jew. He immediately faces discrimination. McGuire stars as his love interest, Kathy Lacy, and Garfield as his Jewish best friend, Dave Goldman.

Bad Stuff:

I could have done without the soppy love story. Not only is it a distraction from the true point of the film, but the Kathy character isn’t particularly likeable, so I wasn’t exactly rooting for things to work out between her and Phil (in fact, I liked Phil better with his co-worker Anne, played by Celeste Holm).

My brain keeps telling me to say that the characters are one-dimensional, but that isn’t it, at least not exactly. There just isn’t a lot of nuance to them. People are either good or bad without much in between, except perhaps for Kathy. Even then, it took Kathy so long (most of the film) to understand her own genteel form of bigotry that I didn’t find her sudden transformation particularly believable.

While we started to move out of the realm of horrible posh accents somewhere around “Casablanca,” we’re still deep in the world of smash-our-faces-together kissing. God, it looks so uncomfortable that it makes me laugh every single time, especially when scenes are supposed to be serious or passionate.

Good Stuff:

There's some really great, snappy dialogue. You know I’m a sucker for that.

The mere existence of Gregory Peck and his voice (drool). My favorite performance of the film, however, goes to Anne Revere, who played his mother, Mrs. Green. Her character is great! Every time she and Peck are onscreen together, it's magic.

I think the film does a very good job of showing bigotry without being really over the top about it. One of the conceits I dislike about movies of this kind is that filmmakers seem to think the audience won’t understand bigotry or racism if it’s not overt, i.e. that we need to see people getting beat up for being Jewish to understand that there’s people out there that don’t like Jews. While there is one slightly physical altercation in the movie, it’s not the main focus. It’s more about the everyday bigotry – getting turned down for a job for having a Jewish name, having assumptions made about you because of your heritage, having a hard time finding a place to live because no one will rent to you, etc. For those of us who’ve been lucky enough not to experience racism directed at us, I think it’s easy to imagine getting beaten up. It’s not as easy to imagine the everyday, little things that we take for granted suddenly becoming extremely difficult to get done. So I admire the film for going there.

The Verdict:

I saw most of this movie once when I was in college, but never had the opportunity to finish it. Coming into it this time, I was a little bit afraid that it would feel like a preachy after-school special. Fortunately, it did not. While I enjoyed the exploration of anti-Semitism, the love story part of it felt like it had been shoehorned into the story. There was no reason for it; it simply detracted from the movie. For that reason, I’m unable to rate it higher.

I give this movie 3.75 stars.