by Chris Marshall:
There have been several instances so far where I have been
pleasantly surprised by a movie, where I expected to dislike it going in and
found that it was actually really good. It is with a heavy heart that I say Gentleman’s Agreement was exactly the
opposite.
I guess that on some level I had no expectations at all; it’s
one of those movies that I knew absolutely nothing about before I started this
project. But before I watched it, I learned that it had a very interesting
premise. Gregory Peck goes undercover as a Jew in order to expose the harsh
realities of anti-Semitism in the United States. That sounded way more
progressive than most films made in the late 1940s, and it seemed like an
obvious precursor to Peck’s role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Unfortunately, the concept was much greater than the execution. The
plot just seemed to wander aimlessly, and it never really made a compelling
point. I know there were millions of limitations on what they could show at the
time, but it still felt like they weren’t willing to take any real chances.
