Gentleman's Agreement

One of those well-intentioned social issue pictures Hollywood loves to heap awards on. I use to think much of the dialogue in this movie was way too heavy-handed and on the nose. But now that I've met people who actually talk and act like the characters here so I'm more inclined to believe it felt even more authentic 75 years ago. Gregory Peck plays a journalist who takes on a high-profile magazine assignment about anti-Semitism. The angle he comes up with to ensure his piece isn't just another work of do-gooder fluff is to pretend to be a Jew himself and experience bigotry firsthand. Along the way he discovers types of prejudice he never realized had been there all along; what we now call microaggressions and internalized racism. Darryl F. Zanuck (one of the only non-Jewish studio moguls of Hollywood's Golden Age) made the picture to ensure he’d finally win the Oscar for Best Picture. It worked. It helped that hired director Elia Kazan, screenwriter Moss Hart, and a solid cast that features great supporting turns by Celeste Holm, John Garfield, and nine-year-old Dean Stockwell.