NR | 1 h 58 min | Drama | 1947
Finley Peter Dunne, a 19th-century American humorist, once wrote that journalism must “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Jewish writer and one-time journalist Laura Zametkin Hobson honored that spirit in her novel “Gentleman’s Agreement.” It’s about a crusading journalist who challenges anti-Semitism.
Legend has it that, when an elite country club stonewalled producer Darryl F. Zanuck mistaking him for a Jew, he promptly adapted Hobson’s novel into a penetrating film directed by Elia Kazan that would go on to win three of its eight Oscar nominations. This was produced when the Nuremberg trials were lulling everyone into believing that prejudicial hatred was dead and buried.
Widowed journalist Philip Schuyler Green (Gregory Peck), his mother Mrs. Green (Ann Revere), and school-going son Tommy Green (Dean Stockwell) move to New York as Green takes up a new assignment, a series of under-the-skin articles on anti-Semitism, which his publisher, John Minify (Albert Dekker), commissions.
First, Green balks at Minify’s project; everything about anti-Semitism has been “said before.” Next, after struggling to describe anti-Semitism to an inquisitive Tommy, he warms to the idea. Then, it possesses him, triggering a daring experiment. He decides he’ll act Jewish for a while, to see how everyone responds.
The thing is, he isn’t prepared for how his inner circle responds, especially those aware that he’s merely trying to extract otherwise elusive insights.
As “Greenberg,” rather than Green, he notices how non-Jews decide who’s hired or fired, who’s excluded from exclusive hotels, who’s bullied at school, and how non-Jewish neighborhoods maintain a gentleman’s agreement, an implicit shared understanding on issues, such as not renting to Jews.
He hears bigotry in passing conversations, sees it in silent glances and (barely) apologetic murmurs. And it fires up his writing. That colleagues Minify and Anne Detrey (Celeste Holm) aren’t prejudiced is small comfort.
One of Kazan’s messages is that it isn’t just direct victims (Jews) who pay the price for anti-Semitism, but indirect victims, too—the non-Jews who resist it. Green’s well-meant stunt ends up straining relationships; his with Kathy and Tommy’s at school.
Kazan’s saying that identity, and victimhood surrounding it, goes only so far.
Sure, many Jews know what it’s like to be targeted. Green’s Jewish buddy Dave Goldman (John Garfield), a soldier back from World War II, looking for a house for his family, gets a firsthand taste of this agreement through landlords when he tried to rent from Kathy and her sister Jane. Of course, there’s nothing gentlemanly about it.
Prophetic Screenwriting, Perfect Cast
The actors expertly traverse their respective arcs. Peck morphs from disinterested professional to uncompromising egalitarian. McGuire’s transformation reveals that the altruistic teacher that Kathy believes she is, is in fact, desperate to protect her privilege. And the enchanting Holm sparkles in every scene she’s in.Bravely, screenwriters Moss Hart and Elia Kazan interrogate complacency, right from the opening scene. Green’s showing Tommy around New York, but the boy is far from tired because there’s so much to see. Tommy asks why they’ve always lived in California. Green says, “I was born there, got married there. Just went right on living there.” Tommy’s mom died when he was 4, so he wonders if his dad misses her, and if he’s likely to remarry. Green asks if he wants him to. Tommy’s not so sure: “I like it fine this way.”
That’s Kazan, in the first three minutes, portraying the comfort of the unafflicted: unafflicted because they’re comfortable, and comfortable because they’re unafflicted.
But, Kazan adds, someone’s comfort isn’t harmful, until someone else is afflicted because of it. Then, rousing from that comfort isn’t just desirable, it’s essential, for without a lived equality there’s no lived freedom. As Green eventually writes, a “tree is known by its fruit.” Injustice corrupts a tree until its fruit—whether equality or freedom—withers.
Courage offscreen matched the courage you see on-screen and puts this movie in a class of its own. At the time, Hollywood’s movers and shakers had warned Zanuck, Kazan, Peck, and Garfield to play it safe to avoid a film that might become a lightning rod of sorts. But, apparently, these gents had a gentleman’s agreement of their own and, heroically, stood by it.
