An idealistic journalist poses as a Jew in order to write a series for his magazine on anti-Semitism.

That’s the logline for Gentleman’s Agreement, 1947’s Best Picture winner. It stars Gregory Peck as Schuyler Green, the steely-eyed crusader like many others that he would become known for through films like this one and To Kill a Mockingbird and so many others throughout his career. John Garfield plays Dave Goldman, his Jewish friend, with whom he commiserates and relates with over the course of the story. Dorothy McGuire plays Kathy Lacy, the niece of his editor and the love interest who doesn’t realize until it’s almost too late that she tolerates prejudice without even knowing it.

For me this film was a mixed bag. The first major component to the film is the story, which was an important one to tell, but at the same time it was too preachy. There were too many soliloquies, not only by Gregory Peck, but by almost every character in the movie. Indeed, it seemed like every important character gave at least one speech that would have been a half a page to a page worth of dialogue. The actors in this film really need to be admired for the amount of dialogue that they had to memorize and convincingly deliver. The problem with all of that dialogue is that it actually slows down the story. I didn’t need this to be an action movie, but there certainly could have been more occasions to show us what was going on rather than tell us what was going on.

Here’s an example. The beginning of the film shows Schuyler and his son Tommy arriving to New York having just moved there from California. After Schuyler receives this assignment to write a story on anti-Semitism, he eventually figures out that the angle involves masquerading himself as a Jew so that he can understand what it’s like to feel prejudice laid against them. Since no one knows him in New York, it’s easy to get everyone to believe he’s Jewish. Only Kathy and her uncle know the truth that Schuyler is not Jewish. As the film progresses, Schuyler and Kathy become romantically involved and are engaged to be married. They decide to take their honeymoon at an exclusive resort in the country, but Dave tells them that the inn is exclusive. In order to see this for himself, Schuyler goes to the inn under the ruse that he’s going to check in, all the while making it obvious that he’s Jewish. Between his conversation with the check in clerk and his conversation with the manager there is a lot of dialogue but there is also a lot of subtext. We are seeing Schuyler get treated with prejudice until the bellhop unceremoniously takes his bag and removes it from the lobby, placing it just outside the threshold and Schuyler, humiliated, humbly walks past the gawking onlookers out of the hotel.

There are two other scenes where characters relate stories about prejudice they’ve experienced or heard. Tommy comes home one night shaken up because some neighborhood boys bullied him and called him a “dirty Jew.” He then proceeds to tell Schuyler about what happened, giving every detail through dialogue what happened to him. In yet another scene, after Schuyler and Kathy have split up, Kathy tells Dave about being at a party where a person told a Jewish joke and how offended she was by it. This scene is slightly more effective because Dave recognized that she was offended but then asked her what she did about it, and when she admitted that she did nothing and she finally realizes that these “gentleman’s agreements” only make people complicit with the bigots even though they may not be bigots themselves, is an important moment in the film. However it would have been more effective had we seen Kathy at the party and seen her reaction rather than having her tell us about it. It would have had us more engaged as an audience if we had seen Tommy get confronted by bullies who called him those vile things.

The first scene is emotionally engaging because we’re seeing it happen. We’re seeing Schuyler get agitated and we feel sorry for him when he has to walk, humiliated, out of the lobby. Even though there is a lot of dialogue in the scene, we are watching it play out in front of us as though we ourselves were there. In the other two scenes we’re given the knowledge second hand. We see that the characters are upset as they’re telling us what happened, but it doesn’t have close to the same emotional impact than had we watched it happen rather than having it told to us.

That’s my overall take on the story of Gentleman’s Agreement. I wish they had showed us more and told us less.

The second major component to Gentleman’s Agreement is the theme. Obviously this is a film about overcoming prejudice, but what makes it interesting is that is shows varying levels of prejudice. When you think about later films that use racism and prejudice as thematic elements, like In the Heat of the Night or To Kill a Mockingbird or even more recent examples like Django Unchained or 42 or 12 Years a Slave, the people who are prejudiced or racist are all in. There is no masking their racism and they clearly believe that Jews or African Americans or whomever they hold their prejudice against are inferior people at best or not even people at all at worst. In Gentleman’s Agreement there are levels to the prejudice. There are plenty of people who are not prejudices against Jews themselves, but they’ll tell Jewish jokes, or they won’t chastise others for doing the same. As mentioned above, they may be complicit in the prejudice of others for not calling it what it is.

Director Elia Kazan did a great job of showing that, while you might not consider yourself to be a bigot, and in fact you may not be a bigot at all, you still may be acting in ways that could be considered to be prejudicial by a certain group of people. You would never discriminate against a Jewish person in a tangible way, like not renting them a room or not giving them a job that they’re qualified for. However, you also might not be offended by a joke that would be offensive to a Jew or a black person or an Asian person. That still is bigotry, only not at the same level.

That, at least, is what this film is trying to say.

The third major component of this film is its tone. This is a very serious film and it takes itself very seriously. It’s dealing with serious subject matter and has a very definite point of view. That’s not to say that there are no moments of levity, because there certainly are and they bring a certain amount of balance to the overall story. John Minify, the magazine editor is played by Albert Dekker with an enthusiastic wit that is a perfect counterbalance to Schuyler’s brooding idealism. Elaine Wales is the fashion writer for the magazine and she’s a spunky and fun woman who was played by Celeste Holm. Her character is somewhat of a rival to Kathy and is a counter balance to her as well. Kathy spends most of the film as a reserved, anxious woman, always nervous that she’ll say something to upset Schuyler. In many ways she’s almost as serious as he is. But Elaine is a spunky, good-time girl, and I found myself rooting for Schuyler to end up with her at the end because I felt like she’d be a much better match for him because she’s the one character in the film that allows Schuyler to look at the world in a less serious way. In fact, her personality is strong enough to demand it.

Kazan took the three major components of this film and used them to craft a film that was serious and bordered on being a little too preachy. That is the unfortunate byproduct of too much telling and not enough showing. Indeed, this is one of the more forgettable Best Picture winners and it shouldn’t be. It should be regarded as an important film with an important message. Indeed, the thematic elements of this film are (unfortunately) timeless as racism and bigotry continue to plague our society even to this day. What this film does is it takes the motif of walking in another’s shoes to gain real empathy on how they live and what they go through. If Kazan had shown us more and told us less, this film could have been an all-timer.

Did the Academy get it right?

Despite my own reservations about this film, I’m inclined to believe that it was the correct choice for Best Motion Picture. A case could be made for Miracle on 34^th Street or for Great Expectations. The former, especially, has achieved classic status if for no other reason than it’s shown on television every year around the Holidays. No film released in 1947 made the AFI Top 100 list, which you can take to mean whatever you wish. I take that it wasn’t a particularly strong field when you compare it to other years of the era. What I will say is that contemporary audiences and critics, as well as Academy voters, realized that this was an important film that should be recognized. It was important both artistically and socially and the Academy must have recognized that not only did Gentleman’s Agreement deserve to win, but it was also proper that it should win since anti-Semitism was so rampant at the time and Gentleman’s Agreement was shining such a bright light on the issue. Combine the overall quality of the film making with the social importance of its message, and Gentleman’s Agreement was the most deserving film of 1947.