The Oscar Grouch

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

Directed by Elia Kazan

Gentleman’s Agreement wasn’t a new movie to me. It wasn’t one I grew up watching, but I’d seen it once or twice before I watched it this time around. I’ve always thought it was a good movie, but it hits so much harder after the Black Lives Matter protests spread across the globe last year in response to George Floyd’s killing. Now, I wish I could make it required viewing for everyone.

So what’s the story? Widowed writer Phil Green has just moved from California to New York with his son and mother for a new job at a magazine. His boss wants him to write an article about anti-Semitism, but Green can’t figure out what he can say that hasn’t been said before, until suddenly he hits on the idea to tell everyone in his new job, neighborhood, etc, that he is Jewish. Although his new girlfriend knows that he isn’t Jewish, his project puts serious strain on their relationship.

The Good: It’s hard to call the acting in Gentleman’s Agreement good, because it isn’t just good; it’s fantastic. There is not a weak actor in the whole movie. Gregory Peck is always reliably good, but he brings the passionate, stubborn, slightly inflexible Phil Green to life. It’s fun to see Dorothy Parker as a wealthy, sophisticated New York divorcee instead of as the nineteenth century mother she plays in Old Yeller and Friendly Persuasion. Anne Revere is excellent as Phil’s mother, Mrs. Green. She’s supportive and strong, despite her health issues, and she’s never afraid to share her opinions with Phil. You can tell she doesn’t suffer fools gladly. I loved John Garfield as Phil’s Jewish boyhood friend and June Havoc as Phil’s secretary. And now we get to talk about the two best actors in the entire film: Celeste Holm and Dean Stockwell. Celeste Holm plays Anne Dettry, the fashion editor at the magazine Phil works for. The moment that she finds out that Phil has a girlfriend is one of the best pieces of acting I have ever seen in my life. Her smile slips just a bit, her eyes sparkle a bit less; you can see her disappointment, but she doesn’t let Phil see it. It’s amazing and heartbreaking. And Dean Stockwell? He plays Tommy Green, Phil’s ten-year-old son. He casually asks his father what “Jewish” means while he’s slicing a banana onto his cornflakes. He cries with all the heartbreak of a child when the other kids won’t play with him because they think he’s Jewish. He is completely natural all the way through the movie. He isn’t stiff or awkward and doesn’t seem to be aware of the camera. I was blown away, especially because Dean Stockwell isn’t an actor that I was unfamiliar with; he was Al in the TV show Quantum Leap in the 1990s and Cavil in Battlestar Galactica in the 2000s. To find out that he had been acting (and acting well!) for almost his entire life made me happy for reasons I can’t explain. 

Of course, all of the amazing acting would have been for naught if Moss Hart’s screenplay hadn’t been wonderful as well. The movie is not quite two hours long, but somehow all of the characters have depth. It feels like all of the characters have a backstory. We may not know anything about those backstories, but they are there. They’ve all had lives before this experience, and they will continue to have lives after the movie is over. The message against anti-Semitism could have been preachy or obvious, and while there are some statements against it, a lot of it is more subtle. It’s fantastic writing. 

The Bad: Phil’s pretending to be Jewish so that he could write about it didn’t sit well with me. It was kind of white savior-ish. Were there no Jewish writers who could have written about the day-to-day prejudices they faced? I suppose the argument could be made that since Phil was experiencing all of the prejudices, big and small, for the first time, it was a more poignant experience, but it still felt weird. 

The Ugly: Anti-Semitism is ugly. The anti-Semitism in Gentleman’s Agreement is not as obvious as the anti-Semitism in Crossfire, but it’s almost worse. It’s worse than the type of prejudice where people say, “Well, I’m not a Nazi, so I don’t really have any prejudice toward Jews. I just don’t really like them.” It’s the same thing that lets people say, “Well, I don’t want black people in my neighborhood, but it’s not like I’m in the KKK or anything.” And it even goes a step beyond that. Gentleman’s Agreement points out the much more subtle ugliness in people who say they’re colorblind, who read newspaper articles about shootings and shake their heads and say, “That’s terrible,” but then don’t stand up against racism or oppression when they see it around them in small, everyday ways. There’s a lot of ugliness in the world; Gentleman’s Agreement tries to help people see that the ugliness comes in many forms.  

Ironically, Elia Kazan, the director of this movie, was someone who didn’t stand up against oppression. When Hollywood was being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, he named names of people who he thought had ties to the Communist Party. I can sympathize with not wanting to be blacklisted in your industry, but for someone who seemed to be invested in standing up for persecuted people, his actions were disappointing. 

A Rebuttal to an Opinion I Read that Has Been Bothering Me for a Long Time: I once read a review about Gentleman’s Agreement that said it was a bad movie because it didn’t talk about the Holocaust when the Holocaust had so recently happened. But this movie isn’t a history of Jewish oppression; it’s a movie about what was happening in America in 1947, not what had happened in Europe two years ago. It’s purpose is partly to say that even though the Holocaust is over, even though it didn’t happen in America, people in America still allow themselves to act on prejudices. Gentleman’s Agreement is for the people who think racism is a thing of the past in America because Barack Obama was elected president. 

 Oscars Won: Best picture; best director; best actress in a supporting role (Celeste Holm).

Other Oscar Nominations: Best actor in a leading role (Gregory Peck); best actress in a leading role (Dorothy McGuire); best actress in a supporting role (Anne Revere); best writing, screenplay; best film editing.