Tag: John Frankenheimer

July 17, 2017 /

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) dir. Elia Kazan

1947’s other “message film” to also deal with antisemitism was Elia Kazan’s Gentleman’s Agreement, which took home Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress. Adapted by Kazan and Moss Hart from Laura Z. Hobson’s best-selling novel of the same name – which she wrote after learning a congressman’s racist tirade against Walter Winchell was met with applause by the House – the film concerns a journalist (Gregory Peck) who spends six months living as a Jew to expose antisemitism in New York for his liberal newsmagazine.

September 13, 2016 / / Main Slate Archive

John Frankenheimer’s genre bending, visually daunting 1966 film SECONDS defies both trends of the decade from which it came, as well as those that would follow. On its surface, it is genre cinema concerned with themes prevalent in most of Frankenheimer’s work up to and after its release: paranoia and isolation. But once into the nitty gritty of the tale it chooses to tell, it becomes about one thing: eternal youth.