Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

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Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) – E. Kazan

This is the movie where Gregory Peck plays a journalist who goes undercover as a Jew in order to experience anti-Semitism himself for a magazine series he is assigned to write.  So, immediately, it seems somehow wrong or in bad taste.  But obviously director Kazan and the team had their hearts in the right place and the result (although flawed) is shocking and overt – not the sort of dialogue you hear in films of the time.  And the decision to target those who are complicit in allowing prejudice to continue by not speaking out against it when they hear it from friends, family, or others -- even though they disagree -- is a good one (and in fact this was the focus of my Ph.D. dissertation, although I focused on anti-Black prejudice, conspicuously ignored here).  Dorothy McGuire is brave to play an unlikeable character who passively allows the country club set to continue their bad jokes and exclusionary policies.  Although the whole thing feels dated, so do most films of the 1940s, right?  Prejudice hasn’t disappeared but often isn’t as overt – except toward certain groups where somehow some still feel free to express it publicly (sexual minorities, Muslims, unfortunately).  Again, as the film points out, the obvious bigots are the ones you can fight and the subtle complicit types are more nefarious.  Gregory Peck is wooden but is able to demonstrate the distress and pressure a target of stigma must feel, especially when speaking out; John Garfield seems more authentic as Peck’s Jewish friend when he explains the actual experience. The point here, and in my dissertation, is that we need to make certain that the norms of the situations (and world) we inhabit do not allow expressions of prejudice and we need to do that by countering it vocally wherever we see it, no matter how difficult that may be.