GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT

US, 1947, 118 minutes, Black and White.
Gregory Peck, Dorothy Mc Guire, John Garfield, Celeste Holm, Ann Revere, Dean Stockwell.
Directed by Elia Kazan.

Gentlemen's Agreement made a strong impression when released soon after the war. It had a double-edge advantage coming so soon after the war. On the one hand, Americans were revolted at Hitler's extermination of the Jews, on the other there were strong feelings of anti-Semitism amongst ordinary Americans.

Anti-Semitism? is frequently harder to pin down than the more obvious racism of black versus white. However, it has had an extraordinarily long tradition and has not been eradicated. This film shows it working in various sections of New York public life, and how a writer passing for a Jew finds prejudice and hostility where he did not expect it. The film is well made, although some of its techniques for getting its point across seem obvious. It was directed by Elia Kazan who has made some strong social dramas including A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront. More recently he made an autobiographical film, America, America (1963) and the interesting drama of modern business life and worries in the U.S., The Arrangement, based on his own novel.

Gentlemen's Agreement is a social film worth seeing and discussing.

1. What is your knowledge of anti-Semitism - in the past, at the time of the film's release? Today?

2. Are we really capable of feeling like someone else from the inside? Does this film help us to see this, and feel the anti-Semitic hostility?

3. Why is there anti-Semitism? Race? Money management? Beliefs? Does the film make this clear?

4. How does the film show this prejudice is manifested? Are people shown being hostile without their noticing?

5. Did you admire Phil Green? Did he do a good thing in passing for Jewish?

6. It could be said that his experience was not typical, as he tested all anti-Semitic feeling within a short space of time. Do you agree?

7. What is the role of Kathy? Ingrained prejudice of which she is unaware - (the best way she can console Tommy after he has been bashed is by reassuring him that he is not a Jew, that it was a lie). She sees prejudice, knows her family shares this, but does nothing about it.

8. What is the role of Phil's mother? Noble momism, the sturdy, tough, encouraging Mother America?

9. The film exhibits an extraordinarily optimistic vision of a great free America. Would this be included in the film now? What has happened to U.S. vision since 1947?

10. Discuss Dave as a 'typical' Jew.

11. Do conventions and the romantic ending spoil the impact of the film?