Gentleman’s Agreement
Year: 1947
Grade: B-
Country: USA
Director: Kazan
Reviewa predictable and somewhat dated, yet timeless film. if that sounds contradictory, allow me to explain. the style and specific subject of discrimination (jews) felt dated to me, but the overarching theme of xenophobia is as timeless a theme as art can address. though the film isn’t as good as merchant of venice and probably isn’t the best film of 1947, it’s a fine film for the most part. my gripes with the film are that it was too predictable and some of the characters’ epiphanies seemed borderline stupid. e.g., when peck figures out that his angle for the anti-semitism story will to go undercover as a jew he treats it as if it’s some major revelation, and it takes a while for him to even come up with the idea. this in spite of the fact that every story in his past were done in the same manner: e.g., he recalls that his story on coal miners was not a result of interviews with coal miners, rather it was a result of his becoming a coal miner and then writing about his experience…if this tactic worked on every story he wrote in the past, what took him so long to apply it to this one? it just wasted 10 minutes of the film showing him trying to come up with a good angle. his fiancé in the film had a similar epiphany when she realized how anti-semitism was being perpetuated in society.
lastly, the best part of the film was peck’s performance. he may be the most principled actor of all-time. roles like this and that of atticus finch and general savage certainly place him in the running.
Watched on TV