I'M A TOUGH customer when it comes to movie romances. I am not usually fond of the meet-cute and fall-instantly-in-love kind of movie. I want to see something real, messy, and emotional, something that requires growth and change and effort by the participants (movies like "When Harry Met Sally" or "Groundhog Day" on the comic end of things, and "Say Anything" or "When a Man Loves a Woman" on the more serious side.)

In my (admittedly limited) experience with pre-1960s movies, I have come across several good love stories, but, before now, never one I absolutely loved. "Casablanca", of course, is a deeply moving romantic story, but part of what's so great about it is how it lets the lovers' rapturous past bloom in your imagination rather than showing it on screen. It works to great effect (and has been borrowed many times over, most recently with Mickey and Maude in "A Mighty Wind"), but ultimately I like to see the process. "It Happened One Night", on the other end of the comic spectrum, is a bouncy and delightful romp of bickering lovers, an ageless scenario that's worked in "The Empire Strikes Back" and Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing". But in the end, I find that the bickering strategy doesn't work so well in real life, and is largely a dramatic construct.

So "Gentleman's Agreement" came as quite a surprise to me. For starters, it's not a romance per se; it's better known for being an "issue" movie. (The main character pretends to be Jewish in order to write a series of articles on anti-Semitism -- a true story, except it was a woman rather than a man who wrote the real articles.) And to throw me even more off track, the couple in question (played by Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire) do meet cute and fall in love instantly.

But things quickly get messy. While Kathy's planning the wedding, Philip is pretending to be Jewish, and is on the receiving end of dirty looks and refused service. Soon his experiment starts disrupting their lives, because she's reluctant to tell her family and friends she's marrying a Jewish man when it's not true. There's a real dilemma here because Philip wants Kathy to get a taste of the prejudice she's experiencing, while she's more concerned with not having to tell her friends someday that she lied to them.

The movie is full of these unexpected touches, these wrestlings not only with the issue of anti-Semitism, but how ethical it is to step into someone else's shoes, and to what extent one's public and private life intersect. Because in the end, one's attitudes and actions are all intertwined, and the point of the story is not simply to stop using racist names or to stop rejecting customers based on their race, but how insidious fear can be, how it can wind its way through the facets of our lives without our being aware of it. It equates the fear of a different race (which most of us know is wrong) with fear of standing up for a different race.

This fear is the force driving these two lovers apart. Fear of growth, fear of change, fear of losing that white picket fence of one's dreams. In many ways their relationship seems doomed, for who can conquer so much fear? Who can leap over all their obstacles placed in life? The movie's answer is fantastic, a litmus test of a relationship that I would pass on to anyone wondering if their love is the real thing. I would reveal it here, but for those who haven't seen the movie, the line on its own would be quite diminished. I encourage you to seek out the movie, and listen for a statement toward the end that answers the question: Do you have to be perfect for a relationship to succeed?

"Gentleman's Agreement" may be most celebrated as a treatise against anti-Semitism, as a 1947 Best Picture winner, or even as a prime of example of art letting you step into other people's shoes. But for me, it is first and foremost a love story. There is nothing I find more beautiful than a pair of deeply divided lovers at last reconciled ... if Biblical metaphor holds true, then such moments are a glimpse of heaven.

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