I was going to search for “worst best picture”, but the site isn’t letting me right now. I’m referring to the 1947 film starring Gregory Peck. My wife and I have started doing mini-retrospectives of various actors. We check out all the films our library has, and watch them in order.
Peck is our current choice, and we started with Gentleman’s Agreement. We both agreed it was essentially unwatchable - torture to sit through it. I said it just shows good actors could be in lousy films, to which my wife responded that Peck’s acting was pretty lousy also. I know it is tough to assess films from different eras, but no aspect of this film impressed us. The directing was - at best - uninspired, and we commented on several awkward edits. There was no chemistry between the 2 leads. Ponderous writing.
Well, today I checked out IMDB, and the damned thing won 3 Oscars and was nominated for 5 others! :eek:
WON: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm - actually, she WAS pretty good.)
NOMINATED: Best actor (Peck); Best Actress (Anne McGuire); Best Supporting Actress (Anne Revere); Best writer; Best editing.
So, anyone got any thoughts? Was it just a lousy year for films? Miracle on 34th Street is the only other one I’m familiar with. Santa might not be as challenging of a topic as anti-Semitism, but I’d sure stack that story, acting, etc. up against Gentleman’s Agreement. Was the academy bowled over by the message of anti-Semitism?
And if anyone can locate a “worst best picture” thread, I’d like to see if this appear on it. If not - it should.
All right, I finally got some search to run, and then ran up against the 120 seconds rule. MAN, this search function stinks, but different topic.
Found a worst best picture thread from 2011, which had only 1 mention of GA.
Seems as tho it was also mentioned on some threads about posters’ favorite B&W films, as well as overrated films. I’ll have to figure out what other folk are saying about it because I thought this was - at best - a standard, “crank them out”, major studio star vehicle film typical of the era, exceptional only because of the clunky message.
It’s so hard for me to respond to this type of thread (although I have numerous times in the past.) *Gentleman’s Agreement *is my favorite movie (along with The Wrath of Khan, but that’s another thread entirely). Its themes resonate so strongly with me that it guides some of how I see the world.
The first time I saw *Gentleman’s Agreement *was on AMC, back when they used to run a film into the ground. I watched it six times over the course of a few days. Every time I would say, “I’ll just watch for a few minutes,” and end up sitting all the way through. Eventually I got the DVD, so that I could watch whenever I liked.
For me, these are the things that make it so worthwhile and memorable:
The theme. Understanding how prejudice actually works; teasing out the difference between people who beat you up in the street and the ones who just turn you away at the reception desk; the concept of the self-hating Jew; and demonstrating the importance of putting yourself in the other person’s shoes to understand what they are feeling – all of these are played out for me in this movie in a way unlike any other work of art.
The performance of Gregory Peck. The way that he plays to type (strong, confident, in control) and yet against type (not understanding the impact that his experiment will have on him and his family, his slow realization, his frustration, and his finally coming to a new understanding) is masterful and makes it possible to understand what the character is going through.
The performance of Celeste Holm. I have never watched Gentleman’s Agreement without secretly hoping that she and Phil would end up together. She is so fun, and arch, and brittle, with that wonderful warmth underneath, you just want to spend all your time hanging out with her. A much-deserved Oscar-winner.
The performance of Dean Stockwell. How could anyone not love Dean Stockwell in this movie? He’s just 100% adorable.
I am no expert on directing or editing, so I can’t comment on them, although I will say that I never noticed any particular problems, except for a few abrupt cuts between scenes. I will say one thing about the lack of chemistry between the two romantic leads. I have read the book on which the movie is based, and the lack of chemistry (e.g. Kathy’s coldness) is a significant part of the story. Maybe it wasn’t translated as well as it could have been on screen, but she is a very superficial person; her relationship with Phil is superficial; and it’s that superficiality that makes her so willing to go along with prejudice.
What else can I say? I know that this movie appears time after time on lists of worst or undeserving best pictures, and I often come into threads to say how much I love it and what it means to me. But taste is subjective. All I know that for me it’s a great, worthwhile film that can be watched multiple times and that I think has valuable lessons for today.
I’m another fan of Gentleman’s Agreement, and enjoy watching it often.
Yes, it’s talky–but I’m very fond of a lot of talk in movies (for example, I tend to like Quentin Tarentino’s stuff).
Yes, it’s earnest–but in an interesting way, as it indicts both the hero and the heroine for their flaws: a certain stubborn determination to do things his own way, no matter what, on the part of the hero, and of course the thoughtless acceptance of bias that’s been part of the heroine all her life (up until the events depicted).
Peck was never a naturalistic actor. He was always rather stagey. But here, it works (for me, anyway).
Thanks for the replies, guys. I’ll give it some more thought. I agree, tastes differ, and I’m certainly not going to try to talk you out of yours.
I’ll point out that the fact that you remember a couple of awkward cuts does not (IMO) well support best director/editor.
And I guess it was somewhat limited by the source material. But goodness! How much takes place in 8 weeks? (Possibly longer - unsure how long he spun his wheels before coming upon his theme.) He meets a woman and essentially gets engaged to her than night - or the next night over dinner. Their whole “reading into each other’s expressions” just rang so false to me - especially since they both impressed me as so expressionless. Then his mom has an episode of angina AND a stroke. Schedules a wedding, then has to put it off. Breaks up. I thought he and Ann almost got engaged. But then gets back with her. Folk sure moved fast back then!
I had a lot of difficulty with the subject matter - much of which I was willing to attribute to the different era. What might have been radical at the time, was kinda hokey today. But some various thoughts:
-Funny that they were all noble challenging anti-semitism, when there wasn’t a single dark complexion on the screen.
-His whole approach was so hokey, essentially just remarking over and over “By the way, I’m Jewish.”
-Thought it curious that the Jewish religion didn’t play any part. Even if he was just a cultural jew, I saw no sign that he had any familiarity with Jewish culture that wouldn’t immediately tip off any other jew that he was an imposter.
-Thought the Jewish friend’s reaction hokey as well. One episode of being turned away at the hotel, and he’s experience it all? I thought that insulting to the actual lifetime of insults experienced by any jew. And why didn’t he wait until they gave him a room key before announcing it?
-There was NO PLACE at all in NYC for his jewish friend to live? Or he was going to screw his entire family’s future simply because he couldn’t live in certain areas?
-The “I don’t like officers” scene was totally unbelievable.
-BTW - was the friend in the army or not? Why was he wearing his uniform, if he had apparently been offered a civilian job?
-I really thought the mother’s role was played woodenly.
Heck, from the opening shot of the skyline, I thought it looked like an amateurish pan and zoom. Or the scene where Peck is walking along, stops and poses over a roadway, gets inspiration, tugs at his hat, and marches on his way. Just 2 of the scenes I thought incredible clunkers.
Yeah, any of these may well be nitpicks, and if you feel the message important enough, they might be ignorable. But I haven’t even gotten to the points I thought really minor.
Again, thanks for the responses. I’m interested in seeing the next movies of Peck’s.
It’s not bad but Gentlemen’s Agreement was not the best movie of 1947. It’s not even the best movie about anti-Semitism from 1947 (that would be the much darker Crossfire).
I only saw the movie once, about 30 years ago. However, it’s entirely possible that immediately after the war, he was still wearing his uniform whether he was on active duty or not. I think this was quite common until ex-GIs had been fully demobilized and reintegrated into civilian life.
Gentleman’s Agreement was a typical Hollywood topical film and those rarely age well. Mainstream Hollywood tends to jump on a topic when it’s safe - at the moment when there’s still opposition but the majority has swung behind the winning side. The result is these movies seem controversial and important the year they’re made but ten years later everyone looks back and wonders why it seemed like such a big deal.
My pick for best picture of 1947 would be Black Narcissus but I’m a big Powell/Pressburger fan.
Many years ago, after a conversation with my Mom about Antisemitism (this wasn’t just a random topic; I am Jewish so I am sure there was context at the time), she brought up this movie. It turned out to be available via Netflix (the DVDs, the streaming service didn’t exist at the time) so we watched it. I barely remember the details of it but I remember liking it. She passed away many years ago but just hearing the title of the movie still reminds me of her.
Thanks - not trying to pile on of persuade anyone, but just got back from a swim, so I was thinking. I thought it took an awfully long time to get going. I bet it was 45 minutes before his epiphany, after which the “jewish experience” impressed me as pretty meagre.
Just to add to the slow buildup, I thought the most significant part was when the GF finally realized that by being silent she was part of the problem. That happened with maybe 5 minutes to go.
And I din’t see the allure of the GF. Why did he find her more appealing than the blonde? These old film characters are so odd. She’s a daycare teacher, whose uncle supports her in a style such that she has an apartment AND a house she can afford to just stand vacant?
Final - REALLY MINOR point - where the hell were those offices supposed to be. Seemed like they were in the middle of Manhattan, and when he first went into the bldg, he went to the 6th floor. But everywhere they went in the office there appeared to be gardens outside the windows. Was there supposed to be an atrium or something? Or did someone just forget that they were supposed to be in Manhattan?
Again - I appreciate hearing other people’s thoughts. I often like to analyze things like this when my impressions seem so extremely at odds with others’.
This. In one, being a Jew means not getting a hotel room. In the other, it means getting murdered.
Compare it to the “Racism is Bad” messages of Driving Miss Daisy (also a Best Picture winner) and Do the Right Thing, both from the same year.
The best thing about GA is the performance of John Garfield, the only prominent Jewish character in the story. Everyone does a lot of speechifying and hand-wringing except him. It’s a performance of nuance in a film with few subtleties.
You’re mixing up scenes. The “Now you know it all” speech by John Garfield isn’t in response to Peck being turned away from the hotel. It’s in response to Dean Stockwell being taunted with anti-Semitic slurs by other kids. Here’s the bit:
There was a major housing crisis in New York City after the war, and he was under a deadline. He had to start the job within a certain amount of time, or he’d lose it, and he couldn’t do that until he had a place to live. Given the severe housing shortage, the fact that he’s a stranger in New York and didn’t have any connections to get a place other than Phil, he only had a short time to find one, and the redlining and covenants keeping him out of certain neighborhoods, it’s quite possible he wouldn’t be able to find anything.
It’s still very hard to find places to live in NYC. I know people who stayed in bad relationships for literally years because neither one could find another place to live.
I like GA. If you want to talk about an award-winning film that’s gone badly stale, try 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. It’s really laughable, except when it makes you sad.
At least GA is so old that it teaches a bit of a history lesson. It’s from a time before the legal concept of “protected classes.” If an hotel owner wanted to keep out blacks and Jews, it was perfectly legal to do so. I’ll bet there are people under the age of 20 who don’t know that.
For me, I think about my parents and grandparents living through those times when I watch the movie, and it makes me very emotional. I love it. I also liked the book it was based on.
I’ll admit, the first time I saw it, I was absolutely riveted, but that it didn’t stand up as well to subsequent viewings; however, that has not stopped me from seeing it something like four times.
“Talky” movies used to be a thing. They were a thing all the way through the 90s, but they went away sort of with CGI, I guess. All the talk is on television, and movies are all about visuals, now that you can do things never before possible, for small budgets compared to the FX budget of something like the 1977 Star Wars.
I like talky films, though, if done right. I love My Dinner with Andre. I love Return of the Secaucus 7. I love Night on Earth. I love Shirley Valentine. I wish people still made movies like those, at least once in a while.
The former summary is pretty much how I remember Gentleman’s Agreement. If quotas for colleges, not getting jobs because of anti-Semitism and such figured into the plot, I don’t recall it (saw the movie maybe 20 years ago).
Yeah, I realized that as I typed it. The hotel bit was the supposedly moving section of his article. Thought the import of both instances was a tad overdone, but - oh well.
I’ve come tot the conclusion that it wasn’t as out of line as an oscar pic as I first thought. The Academy often rewards “message” films. And i’m willing to acknowledge that it WAS quite daring for the times. As someone observed, those don’t necessarily stand up so well over time.
Sure liked it better that Snows of Kilamanjaro - the next Peck film we watched. What a stinker! Not even Ava could get me to force myself to sit through it. But then Roman Holiday was quite enjoyable. Funny, we had recently seen Trumbo, which had a clip from it, and I coulda sworn it was in color in Trumbo. Anyone else remember if that was so?
And our previous actor was Portier, so we just watched Guess Who’s Coming…. I’d seen that before, and liked it. Of course, it was set more in my youth, and I had relatives from SF. So maybe it just didn’t strike me as as “foreign” as GA.
I didn’t think it was great, but it wasn’t terrible either. It was far from Gregory Peck’s best performance. I don’t disagree with the message of the film but I was somewhat put off by its heavy-handed and holier-than-thou delivery.
My favorite films of the year 1947 are Miracle on 34th Street and A Double Life.
The worst best picture ever is Cavalcade (1933), which really is unwatchably bad.
This is sort of the point of the movie, though. The main characters have been relatively oblivious to antisemitism because it’s not so blatant or physical. It’s not so much the threat of physical harm but the countless small daily occurrences that each don’t mean so much to the uninvolved observer but add up to a lifetime of subtle oppression. As a film, cinematically, it has problems but the message is interesting and it presents a variety of characters with different types of antisemitism and reactions to it than you would see in a film where the sides are more black and white, so to speak.
Thus, as noted, we have the protagonist who actually goes looking for antisemitism but finds not only what he expects but also many more types of antisemitism that he was not thinking about such as his girlfriend’s “prejudice by inaction” and the antisemitism within the Jewish community (which is analogous to the racism within the black community that Chris Rock was criticized for making fun of in his stand-up act 50 years later).