Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer Gallery-Cast
Rating
Year Of Production	1947
Running Time	113:32
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (46:10)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Elia Kazan
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Gregory Peck Dorothy McGuire Celeste Holm
Case	?
RPI	$36.95	Music	None Given

    Continuing Fox Home Entertainment's recent releases of some of their cinematic classics is Gentleman's Agreement. This film won three Academy Awards in 1947 including Best Picture, Best Director for Elia Kazan, and Best Supporting Actress for Celeste Holm. Adapted from Laura Z. Hobson's book, this is a film about prejudices and in particular anti-Semitism. Gregory Peck stars as Phil Green, a newly-started journalist for a national magazine who is trying to write an article on anti-Semitism but is having difficulty finding the correct angle. He decides to go off on a tangent and pretend that he is himself a Jew and to record the reactions that he gets. He is relatively new to his position in New York City, so believes that he will be able to pull off the deception easily.

    The reactions from friends, family, and work colleagues are almost immediate. Comments such as 'but some of my best friends are Jewish' abound and his fiancé, Cathy (Dorothy McGuire), is having particular trouble coming to terms with the reactions that are coming from people she thought she knew. As Phil gets deeper and deeper into his 'role' the subtle nature of some of the prejudices come to the surface more prominently. Prejudices seem to reside in almost all people - they are just hidden deeper in some. The only characters that defy this trend are Phil's work colleague Anne (Celeste Holm) and his lifelong best-mate Dave (John Garfield). Dave is Jewish and has copped the brunt of prejudice his whole life. When Phil's fiancé exhibits some prejudices of her own, he realises he may have uncovered more than he expected and doesn't really like what he sees.

Video

    Any film that is over 50 years old is likely to have the odd problem or two in the video quality area, but this effort scrubs up pretty well.

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 this is pretty close to the original Academy ratio of 1.37:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    Like many films of the era, it is not overly sharp, tending towards a soft focus effect on many of the shots. Edge enhancement is evident throughout with some really glaring examples present in the scenes around 54:44 to 59:00.

    Shadow detail is adequate, and although grain is present it doesn't tend to become a burden. There is no low level noise.
   
    I noticed no MPEG artefacts, and film-to-video artefacts are minimal. Numerous film artefacts of various shapes and sizes appear throughout. Some are quite significant in size but are not overly distracting and are more-or-less in the bounds of what would be expected from a film of this vintage.

    Being a black and white film, colour is not an issue, though the blacks on display are deep and solid.

    There are several subtitle options available. I sampled the English for the Hearing Impaired variety extensively and found them to be highly accurate, though having them presented on a black boxed background was a little annoying because of the amount of on-screen action that disappeared behind them.

    This is a dual layered disc with RSDL formatting. The layer change occurs at 46:10 on a fade-to-black scene change, though the actual pause occurs about half a second before the full black screen appears, so it is quite noticeable.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    For a film that is over 50 years old, the audio is not too bad, despite being only a mono offering.

    There is only one audio track available, this being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono track.
   
    Dialogue is clear if a little harsh and tinny. There are no audio sync problems. I had no trouble hearing all that was on offer.

    The music is fairly typical of the period. Loud and quite brash.

    The surround channels and sub had the night off.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Theatrical Trailer

    A very old fashioned voice-over style trailer that appears to be more of a re-release trailer as it mentions the awards that the film won. Presented in an aspect of 1.33:1, it is not 16x9 enhanced. Audio is the same Dolby Digital 2.0 mono that features in the main film, though it is of very poor quality here with a great deal of scratchy background hiss. Running time is 2:54 minutes.

Gallery

    Very basic gallery, with only one small picture for each of the cast.

    Aside from a bonus trailer it would appear that the Region 1 disc is basically identical to ours. I would therefore favour the local disc on price alone.

    The quality of the video and audio are certainly better than I was expecting for a film of this vintage. For a film that won the Best Picture and Director Oscars though, I was a little disappointed with the lack of extras. This is certainly a topic that could offer a vast range of extras.

    Overall, this is a decent film that deserves a look by all classics buffs presented with a decent transfer from Fox.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall