Film Culture (1956)

and a major subject new to the screen, anti-Semitism. The film was extremely popular, and won the Academy Award and New York Film Critics’ prize as “‘best picture” in a year which saw the release, in America, of Great Expectations and Odd Man Out. Unfortunately, the acclaim was not altogether justified. Kazan was obviously enthusiastic about his subject, but he was let down by his script—a slick and empty treatment (by Moss Hart) of a popular novel. The theme was impressive, but the hero, a crusading reporter who pretends to be Jewish, was unconvincing. Although the heroine, a snobbish but attractive sophisticate whose modern views on prejudice conceal her own inherent anti-Semitism, was an original creation (and made more so by the acting of Dorothy McGuire, who had given a memotable performance in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), the resolution of the central problem turned into a typical lovers’ quarrel solved by a last-scene clinch. The shallowness of the plot was emphasized by the realism of Kazan’s technique; studiously avoiding “romantic” lighting and music, Kazan unwisely tried to present the story as a true and genuine one—which it glaringly was not. A more romantic treatment might have helped to disguise the artificiality of the dialogue; as it was, the film was boring and didactic. The uncompromising photography furthermore emphasized the inadequacy of the acting, which, except THE WESTERN — OLD GEORGE N. FENIN “T’ve labored long and hard for bread For honor and for riches But on my corns too long you've tred You fine-haired sons of bitches. . .”’ BLACK BART, THE PO-8 (alias for Charles E. Bolton, Poet and Outlaw, who may have died in Nevada with his boots on). The historical background During the American Revolution, the NoMan’s land that lay between the American regular forces in the North and the New York encampment of the British in the South was known for the performances of McGuire, John Garfield, and Celeste Holm, was undistinguished. Gentleman’s Agreement was by no means a bad film, but it was a barely competent one. Significantly, after the timeliness of the subject had faded, a number of prominent critics who overrated the film at the time of its release began to reverse their judgments, with the result that the film today is criticized somewhat more than it deserves. Kazan apparently learned something from Gentleman's Agreement, for since that film his work has never been static or dull. The interval _ following its release, however, was a crucial one, for Kazan returned to the stage to direct A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman. When the latter play opened, it was clear that Kazan, as director of the two most important dramatic plays of the modern American theater, had reached the peak of his stage career. Kazan still maintains that he is primarily a stage director, and that he accepts Hollywood employment only because of the shortage of good new plays. (He has continued to do excellent periodic work on such plays as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tea and Sympathy, and Camino Real.) Since 1948, however, Kazan has devoted his attention with increasing seriousness to motion pictures, as a medium yet to be conquered. The evidence of his new approach was immediately apparent. (Continued on page 21) AND NEW as the Neutral Ground. It was a devastated country where two opposing partisan groups sought and battled each other in cruel and bloody skirmishes, forays, cattle and horse thievings. The guerrillas fighting for Washington’s cause were called Skinners. These operating with the support of George the III's British dragoons were known as Cowboys, this name deriving from the English farm lads who cared for the cattle in the Surrey and Essex countrysides. It was, in fact, not until several decades after the establishment of the Colonies’ independence that the Cowboy became an American. In a few 5