Philip Schuyler Green is a journalist who is asked by a New York magazine publisher to write an article on anti-Semitism in America. He is initially reluctant to accept the commission, but eventually agrees, and although he is a gentile decides to adopt a Jewish identity and to write about his own experiences. This is not difficult as he is not well-known in the city, having recently moved there from California. Green adopts the Jewish-sounding name "Phil Greenberg" and is shocked by the prejudice he encounters. A doctor makes unprofessional remarks about a Jewish colleague, he is refused admission to an upmarket "restricted" hotel and his son Tommy is subjected to anti-Semitic bullying at school. To make matters worse, Green discovers that anti-Jewish prejudice exists even at the supposedly liberal magazine he works for. His secretary, Elaine Wales, reveals that she is Jewish but was forced to adopt a gentile-sounding pseudonym in order to get the job. (When she applied under her real name, Estelle Walovsky, her application was rejected).
Besides Green's professional work, the film also deals with his personal life. He is a widower with a young son, living with his mother. An important theme in the film is his romance with Kathy, the niece of his publisher, a romance which is placed under strain when he begins to suspect that Kathy's views on racial matters may be less liberal than his own. The title "Gentleman's Agreement" refers on one level to Kathy's home affluent town of Darien, Connecticut, whose residents have an unwritten agreement not to sell property to Jews. On a wider level, however, the title also refers to a "gentlemen's agreement" among American gentiles (and, indeed, among some American Jews) not to mention or to confront the problem of anti-Semitism.
It was a brave, and controversial, move for the studio, 20th Century- Fox, to tackle this subject in 1947. Many Americans would have preferred to believe that anti-Semitism was something alien, associated with the evil Nazi regime which they had defeated two years earlier, and did not want to hear that it was still a problem in their own country. The film was, apparently, a personal initiative by the studio's head, Darryl F. Zanuck, who held strong views about the issue. Zanuck, in fact, was one of the few Hollywood moguls of the era who were not Jewish, and some influential Jewish figures in the industry tried to persuade him not to make it. The film's political theme drew it to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which called Zanuck, director Elia Kazan and some of its stars to testify before it.
Zanuck was rewarded for his courage when the film was nominated for eight Oscars and won three including Best Picture and Best Director for Kazan. (The third went to Celeste Holm as Best Supporting Actress). Yet in my view it is, artistically speaking, not a very good film. It is certainly not in the same class as Kazan's other Oscar-winner "On the Waterfront". I have not seen all the films which were in contention for "Best Picture" in 1947, but one which definitely deserved the Oscar far more was David Lean's masterly version of "Great Expectations". (Another unsuccessful nomination, "Crossfire", which I have not seen, also dealt with the subject of anti-Semitism).
The film's artistic faults are twofold. Firstly, it is overlong and static, too dominated by talk with little in the way of action. Secondly, the character of Green, as played by Gregory Peck, is an unattractive one, the sort of liberal who is so convinced of the rightness of his views that he becomes a self-righteous bore and even something of a bully, prepared to harangue mercilessly not only those who disagree with him but also those whom he suspects of agreeing with him with insufficient fervour. I found his berating of Elaine particularly distasteful. Certainly, some of Elaine's views do seem objectionable; she is, for example, less than happy when the firm introduces a new, explicitly non-discriminatory recruitment policy because of her fears that the "wrong sort" of Jews will be attracted to the company. It did, however, seem presumptuous of the gentile Green, on the basis of eight weeks pretending to be a Jew, to lecture a Jewish woman on the best way to combat anti-Semitism, a problem she has presumably had to fight all her life. Whenever Green gets onto the subject of prejudice with Kathy he seems less like a man speaking to the woman he loves than a politician engaging in a heated debate with an opponent, so much so that my sympathies were with Kathy when she stormed out on him.
Hollywood could indeed make excellent films about racial prejudice, and Peck was later to star in one of the greatest of these, "To Kill a Mockingbird". Another good one from the late forties is Clarence Brown's "Intruder in the Dust". "Gentleman's Agreement", by contrast, serves as a reminder that not every film made in support of a good cause is necessarily a good one. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that all those Oscar nominations were made more on account of the film's politics than on account of its artistic merits. 5/10
Besides Green's professional work, the film also deals with his personal life. He is a widower with a young son, living with his mother. An important theme in the film is his romance with Kathy, the niece of his publisher, a romance which is placed under strain when he begins to suspect that Kathy's views on racial matters may be less liberal than his own. The title "Gentleman's Agreement" refers on one level to Kathy's home affluent town of Darien, Connecticut, whose residents have an unwritten agreement not to sell property to Jews. On a wider level, however, the title also refers to a "gentlemen's agreement" among American gentiles (and, indeed, among some American Jews) not to mention or to confront the problem of anti-Semitism.
It was a brave, and controversial, move for the studio, 20th Century- Fox, to tackle this subject in 1947. Many Americans would have preferred to believe that anti-Semitism was something alien, associated with the evil Nazi regime which they had defeated two years earlier, and did not want to hear that it was still a problem in their own country. The film was, apparently, a personal initiative by the studio's head, Darryl F. Zanuck, who held strong views about the issue. Zanuck, in fact, was one of the few Hollywood moguls of the era who were not Jewish, and some influential Jewish figures in the industry tried to persuade him not to make it. The film's political theme drew it to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which called Zanuck, director Elia Kazan and some of its stars to testify before it.
Zanuck was rewarded for his courage when the film was nominated for eight Oscars and won three including Best Picture and Best Director for Kazan. (The third went to Celeste Holm as Best Supporting Actress). Yet in my view it is, artistically speaking, not a very good film. It is certainly not in the same class as Kazan's other Oscar-winner "On the Waterfront". I have not seen all the films which were in contention for "Best Picture" in 1947, but one which definitely deserved the Oscar far more was David Lean's masterly version of "Great Expectations". (Another unsuccessful nomination, "Crossfire", which I have not seen, also dealt with the subject of anti-Semitism).
The film's artistic faults are twofold. Firstly, it is overlong and static, too dominated by talk with little in the way of action. Secondly, the character of Green, as played by Gregory Peck, is an unattractive one, the sort of liberal who is so convinced of the rightness of his views that he becomes a self-righteous bore and even something of a bully, prepared to harangue mercilessly not only those who disagree with him but also those whom he suspects of agreeing with him with insufficient fervour. I found his berating of Elaine particularly distasteful. Certainly, some of Elaine's views do seem objectionable; she is, for example, less than happy when the firm introduces a new, explicitly non-discriminatory recruitment policy because of her fears that the "wrong sort" of Jews will be attracted to the company. It did, however, seem presumptuous of the gentile Green, on the basis of eight weeks pretending to be a Jew, to lecture a Jewish woman on the best way to combat anti-Semitism, a problem she has presumably had to fight all her life. Whenever Green gets onto the subject of prejudice with Kathy he seems less like a man speaking to the woman he loves than a politician engaging in a heated debate with an opponent, so much so that my sympathies were with Kathy when she stormed out on him.
Hollywood could indeed make excellent films about racial prejudice, and Peck was later to star in one of the greatest of these, "To Kill a Mockingbird". Another good one from the late forties is Clarence Brown's "Intruder in the Dust". "Gentleman's Agreement", by contrast, serves as a reminder that not every film made in support of a good cause is necessarily a good one. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that all those Oscar nominations were made more on account of the film's politics than on account of its artistic merits. 5/10