No. 85: Gentleman’s Agreement
An understated American classic
December 05, 2011
1947, dir. Elia Kazan. The most notable thing about this morality play about a journalist pretending to be a Jew in order to expose genteel American anti-Semitism in the late 1940s is that the film is set in the late 1940s and not a single mention is made of those historical events, you know, just a few years before, that were sort of important for Jews. Still: a Jewish Gregory Peck? Dayenu.
Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.
