Gentleman's Agreement

Until the appearance of "Crossfire" a few months age, Hollywood carefully avoided the subject of anti-semitism. "Crossfire" was a story of violence and hate that was hardly close to the experience of most movie audiences. "Gentleman's Agreement," the second outspoken attack on anti-semitism, shows the thing in almost every one of its usual forms: The hero, who for a few months pretends to be a Jew, discovers it in his finance as well as in a hotel manager, and in Jews themselves as well as in Christians.

A survey of the scope of anti-semitism will not be a revelation to most people, and a survey as methodical as this picture cannot hope to contain thrills and excitement. Instead it works up an almost morbid eagerness to find out what new civilized horror is coming next. Sympathetic characters turn out to have subconscious prejudices, and each unkind word strikes a new blow at the hero. As usual there is a love story in the middle, and very soon even it becomes entangled with anti-semitism.

Aside from the treatment of its main theme, "Gentleman's Agreement" is one of the few pictures that contains an intelligent and realistic portrayal of the well-to-do semi-literary people who inhabit New York. Gregory Peek, John Garfield, Dorothy McGurie, and Celeste Holm are always completely aware of what is in the characters they are pretending to be. Perhaps they are a little too sensitive to the picture's peculiar brand of hate, but to them it is a casual frequenter of homes and business offices rather than a satanie mouster.

Above all, "Gentleman's Agreement" is a call for action that will be somewhat embarrassing to everyone except those who reject its message right from the beginning. The gentleman's agreement is a compact of silence, it says, and these who tacitly, even if unwillingly, accept anti-semitism as a part of the social system are as guilty as the active bigots. This point is made with a minimum of declamatory speeches: a burning issue has been put frankly before the eyes of the public, and the overall excellence of the movie as a movie should attract many besides the already ardent.