To be honest, I haven't seen Gentleman's Agreement for some time, but I do have it. So it's hard for me to comment on production. I do know that Elia Kazan won as best director. I'm guessing what you're seeing is Kazan's gritty realism, which was his signature such as On The Waterfront. and Streetcar Named Desire.
I'm more taken with its antisemetic theme in post-war and the lengths Philip Greene goes through to prove antisemitisim and bigotry in the United States. Highly-sensitive stuff after the liberation of the Nazi death camps just a couple of years earlier.
The woman who plays Greene's mother (I forget her name, I think its Anne Revere) was later black-balled in the MacArthy hearings on communism in 1952; it ruined her career. Kazan, on the other hand, was a witness and basically lost respect and freinds in Hollywood after snitching on them.
See ya at the movies.
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