Antisemitism is a word that has recently been mentioned a lot. Some would argue that it is abused in order to silence debates about some unpleasant topics and, like so many words describing similar dark phenomena of the 20th Century, has lost much of its meaning. But it still describes something that is as real today as it was centuries ago and which found its ultimate expression in the horrors of the Holocaust.
Hollywood, despite being founded, built and run mostly by victims of antisemitism and their descendants, found many convenient reasons not to deal with the issue in the first decades of its existence. It all changed with Gentleman’s Agreement, a 1947 drama directed by Elia Kazan.
The film is based on the bestselling novel by Laura Z. Hobson. The protagonist, played by Gregory Peck, is Philip Schuyler Green, a widowed journalist who arrives from California to New York City with his young son Tommy (played by Dean Stockwell) and elderly mother (played by Anne Revere) to take up his new job at a liberal magazine. His editor John Minify (played by Albert Dekker) wants him to write a series of articles about antisemitism in American society. Green at first finds it difficult to find inspiration for his work, partly because antisemitism isn’t that apparent in the upper-class circles he frequents—circles which include Minify’s beautiful niece Kathy Lacey (played by Dorothy McGuire), with whom he starts a romantic relationship.
Green finally decides to pretend to be Jewish in order to see whether there is still prejudice or not. He, much to his displeasure and anger, finds that Jews are discriminated against, though not openly but through a “gentleman’s agreement” that bars them from hotels, summer camps, colleges, or apartments for rent, or which forces Jews, like his secretary Elaine Wales (played by June Havoc), to change their names before applying for jobs. Green becomes increasingly infuriated by his revelations, especially when it turns out that Kathy, fearing for her standing among antisemitic neighbours in posh Connecticut communities, wants Green to end his charade, which in turn begins to destroy their relationship.
Gentleman’s Agreement was made possible by Daryl F. Zanuck, one of the few non-Jewish moguls of Classic Hollywood. Unlike his Jewish colleagues, wary of bringing attention to their minority status and fearful of alienating an antisemitic audience, he was determined to confront antisemitism on screen once and for all, partly inspired by an incident in which he had been mistaken for a Jew and denied entry into a seemingly respectable high-class hotel. The recently ended Second World War and revelations about the true nature and scope of the Holocaust, something the American public still had trouble coming to grips with, also played a part in Zanuck’s decision to have the film made. He nevertheless had problems gathering talent for the project, most notably the famous star Cary Grant, who turned down the main role over his own alleged Jewishness.
The cast and crew that ended up working on the film were, however, quite talented. Elia Kazan, the son of Greek immigrants from Asia Minor, was the right choice for director, belonging to a minority that was, like Jews, subject to persecution and ethnic cleansing and seen as alien to the WASP mainstream of American society. Kazan was known for striving for authenticity in his work, but this approach is visible only at the very beginning, when he establishes the New York City setting with impressive location shots. For the rest of the film, Gentleman’s Agreement is stylistically rather conventional and could have worked as an average television film or stage play. It is also a film that tries to convey its message of tolerance, equality, and freedom in a way that might have been suitable for late‑1940s America, but not for today’s audience, who would find it too explicit and preachy. The film, in order to illustrate the point of intolerance and bigotry, has characters utter certain slurs that apparently passed the Hays Office censorship of its day but that could result in people being banned from certain social networks today.
The main issue of the film is its pace. Gentleman’s Agreement is simply too long. It takes almost an hour for the protagonist to get to the idea of impersonating a Jew in order to test antisemitic prejudice. This, in turn, is an opportunity for Kazan to showcase some fine acting talent, which includes young Dean Stockwell—who later won a special Juvenile Oscar—and Celeste Holm in an impressive, though not actually essential, role as a fashion editor, which brought her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Gregory Peck, on the other hand, is the weakest point of the film. He somehow makes his noble crusading character look not only smug and self-righteous, but dislikeable. John Garfield, who plays the protagonist’s Jewish childhood friend Dave Goldman, is much more effective in serving as the film’s moral anchor.
Despite these flaws, it proved that having one’s heart in the right place and dealing with some contemporary issues (like the upcoming creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, which is mentioned in the film) resonated not only with snobbish critics but with the general audience. Gentleman’s Agreement became a big box‑office hit and subsequently won an Oscar for Best Picture, while Kazan grabbed his first Oscar for Best Director. But very soon it turned out that such triumph could be short‑lived due to the capricious nature of political circumstances. Antisemitism in America, as in so many countries at the time, went hand in hand with anticommunism, a force that was growing with the escalation of the Cold War and found its reflection in McCarthyist hysteria and the persecution of left‑wing and progressive Hollywood filmmakers. Kazan, together with members of his cast, soon became its target. Two of his actors—Revere and Garfield—had their careers ended, and Kazan himself escaped this fate only by controversially agreeing to become an informant, thus not only destroying his friends’ and colleagues’ lives and careers but, in essence, becoming the very thing he had pointed a finger against in this film.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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