1947 Gentleman's Agreement

1947 Gentleman's Agreement



If I had to sum this movie up in one word, it would be preachy.

It addresses a very important subject (antisemitism), perhaps one not yet much addressed at that time, but I found that it took a good idea and overdid it  In particular, the protagonist, Philip Green (Gregory Peck), was overblown.

Philip is a newspaper journalist with more righteousness and integrity than you, me, or anybody else in this whole world.  He is asked to write an article on antisemitism, and decides he will approach the article by pretending that he is Jewish and seeing how he is treated.  Still a good idea, but he becomes so holier than thou that I stopped liking him and stopped listening to the message that the movie was trying to get across.

Nobody is as principled as him (except his saintly mother).  Not only that, the whole world is antisemitic except him, or so he seems to think.

He gets engaged to a girl, and she is always falling short of his lofty ideals and getting an earful from him about it.  It isn't enough that she supports him in his cause, she also has to actively join his fight (one he didn't take up until he was paid to do so, by the way).  This includes giving up her beloved home that she'd built and dreamed of living in for years.  She is always wrong, he is always right.

Letting his Jewis co-worker have it for being antisemitic.

He was just tooo much.  The most annoying part was when he berated an actual Jewish woman for being antisemitic.  Instead, since he is trying to learn about what it is like to live as a Jewish person, why not stop telling her how wrong she is and just shut up and listen to what she has to say, since she has been Jewish her whole life instead of pretending for 2 minutes?  Oh Gregory Peck, you made a much more sympathetic and noble character in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Philip Green felt like a caricature of Atticus Finch.

I prefer Miracle on 34th Street as winner for this year -more iconic and memorable.