Gentleman's Agreement

I have been trying to get these out every Thursday but this one didn’t quite make it. The 20th movie to win Best Picture and the third in a series of socially aware movies Gentleman's Agreement is about a writer’s investigation into anti-Semitism in post WWII America. It took me a few tries to watch the whole movie because it's a little boring and I kept falling asleep. Gregory Peck plays a magazine writer who moves to New York from a rural town. His first assignment at the magazine is to write a piece on anti-Semitism. He tries to come up with a new angle and decides the only way he can write something different is to experience it himself and he pretends to be Jewish for six months. During the six months he experiences different types of prejudice even some from other Jews, and the whole experiment puts a strain on his relationship he just started with a young woman and also his family and friends.

The movie seems kind of dated as anti-Semitism is not a prevalent nowadays or at least not as obvious. Or maybe I am just being naïve in thinking that. Either way the movie just doesn’t resonate with me and just felt preachy. Gregory Peck gives another amazing performance as he usually does. Elia Kazan was considered one of the Best Directors of the time he had 5 nominations and 2 wins for best director. He did win best director for this movie, but I read that he did not like the movie. He felt that if lacked passion and that the romance was too forced. I agree with that. The romance in the movie was kind of forced. He meets this girl and the next day they are engaged. It appears that another girl likes him but nothing happens and it just seems like it was an after thought. The studio execs at the time did not want this movie made. Most of them were Jewish and they thought that making this movie would just stir up a hornet’s nest, but producer Darryl F. Zanuck thought it was a good topic to talk about after the revelations of what happened in German Concentration Camps. While the movie did cause some problems wjen it was released for the most part it was widely accepted and was one of the highest grossing movies of the year. It appears to me that it was a bad year for film and there were not many good movies released that year and this might have been the best movie of the year. The only other movie I saw that was released in 1947 was Song of the South and while that is notable for other reasons I would not consider it a great movie. I never did see Miracle on 34th Street even though it is played every year at Christmas time I am not much into Christmas movies.

Other Facts
Beat Miracle on 34th Street for best picture.
The first special award for foreign film was given to Shoeshine, although it was not made an official competitive category till 1956.
James Baskett received an Honorary Award for playing Uncle Remus in Song of the South making him the first African American male win an academy award, (the first African American Male to win a competitive award would be Sidney Poitier for The Defiant Ones in 1958). Song of the South also won best song for “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” and oddly enough Song of the South was never released on DVD in the United States because of what is seen as racial stereotyping of African Americans.