Change Your Image
ericlee
Reviews
Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
Packs an emotional punch even after 60 years
I've seen "Gentleman's Agreement" at least a half dozen times, but the effect never lessens and I write these words still wiping tears from my face.
Of course so much of the movie - including its basic premise - is complete nonsense. If a magazine editor really wants a first-person account of what it means to be the victim of anti-Semitic prejudice, why not just hire a Jewish writer? And there are characterisations that are absurd - the "anti-Semitic" secretary, for example.
And yet - the film packs an emotional punch that has not lessened in the sixty years since it first came out. The most powerful moment in the entire film, for me, comes when Phil's young son returns from school to report that he had been at the receiving end of anti-Semitic verbal abuse from other children. Phil's WASP girlfriend, always ready with the wrong thing to say, hugs him and reassures him that everything is OK because he's not really Jewish. From that moment on, it seems that the relationship between the two leads is doomed, as it should be.
The most likable characters in the film are John Garfield and Celeste Holm, the latter winning a well-deserved Oscar for her performance.
The film succeeds in spite of its premise, in spite of some silly characterisations, and even in spite of the tacked-on happy end (Phil should wind up with Anne). It succeeds because it addresses the issue of anti-Semitism with an extraordinary power, and Gregory Peck demonstrates here, as in "To Kill A Mockingbird" that when you need an actor to embody basic human decency, he's your man.
Die Büchse der Pandora (1929)
Outstanding
Louise Brooks is one of the most beautiful and seductive actresses who ever lived. This film is her triumph. As others have pointed out, it is an utterly modern film -- including Brooks' hints at bisexuality.
But it is also a film about class, and about money, and about violence against women. Brooks is repeatedly abused by men, grabbed, shaken, hit and eventually murdered. So the film is not only modern in its sexuality, but in the broader social issues it raises.
One minor point, one commenter noted the menorah in her first apartment; I could not see it that clearly, but while it had room for eight candles all of equal height, I did not notice a place for the ninth candle, the one which lights the others, known in Hebrew as a "shamash" (servant). I saw no other Jewish symbols in the room, nor were their any other references -- at least not explicit ones -- to Judaism or Naziism.
Land and Freedom (1995)
What this film is really about: Stalinism
Though set in Spain during the time of the civil war of 1936-39, Loach's film belongs more to the genre of anti-Stalinist cinema than it does to films about Spain. The main theme of the film is the young man's discovery about the reality of the political movement to which he has devoted his life. And the climactic moment in the film is when he rips up his Communist Party membership card.
The crimes of the Stalinists are portrayed throughout the film -- they deny decent, modern weapons to those sections of the front which they do not control; they actively engage in repression against the POUM and the anarchists in Barcelona; in the pages of the British Daily Worker which we briefly see on the screen, we are shown the daily barrage of lies they spread (such as Trotsky's 'support' for Franco fascism).
Anyone who sees this film as simply a black-and-white, good vs evil portrayal of heroic young people aiding the brave Spaniards in their battle for freedom is missing what is, I believe, its main point. It is not primarily about Spain.
Seeing a film like this, I cannot forget the more typical Hollywood portrayals (at least in the last generation) of Communists. A film like "The Way We Were" shows the American Communist Party only during those moments when its positions would today be considered palatable (supporting the Spanish republic, backing Roosevelt and the US war effort in World War II, and later calling for nuclear disarmament).
It doesn't show the time of the Moscow Trials, nor the real role played by the Soviet Union and its agents in Spain, nor the Communist Party's opposition to fighting Hitler and the Nazis in 1939-41, nor the post-war period when the Party did what it could to encourage nuclear proliferation by passing on atomic secrets to Stalin.
Land and Freedom does try to show one of the Comintern's uglier moments, to its credit.
A film like this was made possible by the fact that Loach comes out of the British far left, and the British far left has long been dominated not by Stalinists but by their Marxist opponents -- primarily the Trotskyists of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Whatever disagreements I or others may have with the SWP (and they are many), at least they rejected Stalinism.
What we need are more films like this showing the real role played by Communist Parties all during the history of the Soviet regime. For example a film set in any European country during the period between September 1939 and June 1941 (the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact) which honestly portrays Communist parties as allies of the Nazis (even in occupied countries like Norway and France) would be welcome.