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ARTHUR
MILLER BRINGS ETHNIC HATRED INTO FOCUS
Arthur Miller’s novel Focus (1945)
has been brought to the screen by director Neal Slavin at
a time of national hysteria over international terrorism.
Whereas filmviewers will recall how Gentleman’s
Agreement (1947) featured a Gentile news reporter
who pretends to be a Jew to dig up a story about postwar anti-Semitism,
the film Focus tells a similar story from the
standpoint of a Gentile mistaken for a Jew during World War
II and based on Miller’s own experiences. Lawrence Newman
(played by William H. Macy) has been a personnel administrator
for a venerable New York firm for twenty years. One night
he is awakened as a neighbor is beating up and raping a prostitute,
but he goes back to bed and does not report the crime; the
woman is later taken to the hospital in a coma. Due to male
pride, he refuses to wear glasses, but one day his immediate
boss insists. When he arrives home in Brooklyn with his new
spectacles, his mother (played by Kay Hawtrey) disapproves
of the style of his frame because now he appears Jewish. But
Newman discounts her perceptive observation; after all, he
is Episcopalian, and his forebears were Pilgrims. One day
he interviews job applicants for the position of typist. When
Gertrude Hart (played by Laura Dern) walks to his office swinging
her hips and crosses her legs lasciviously before unmarried
Newman, he concludes that he cannot hire her because the company’s
policy is to refuse to hire Jews. A Gentile, she sounds off
against his obvious discrimination and leaves. At the end
of the day his boss is so displeased with his new bespectacled
appearance that he insists that Newman exchange his position
for that of a mere clerk, so he quits. When he applies for
personnel administrator positions elsewhere, he is turned
down because of his Jewish appearance; ultimately, he applies
at Meyer Peterson, a Jewish firm in Hoboken. By some coincidence,
Miss Hart is the boss’s secretary, so he apologizes to
her, she puts in a good word for him, he gets the job, she
agrees to be his girlfriend, they marry, and the newlyweds
move into the Newman house in Brooklyn.
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Meanwhile,
Newman’s next-door neighbor Fred (played by Meat Loaf
Aday) has joined the Union Crusaders, followers of Father
Crighton (played by Kenneth Welsh) who believe that Jewish
internationalists caused World War II and who terrorize Jews.
Finklestein (played by David Paymer), who runs a store at
the corner, becomes the first victim of the Union Crusaders
when garbage is overturned in front of his store. Fred importunes
Newman into attending block meetings to rid the neighborhood
of all Jews, but Newman demurs, and garbage soon ends up on
his lawn. Newman, accordingly, is intimidated into buying
his Sunday newspaper from friends of Fred rather than from
Finklestein. Then, when Newman brings home his new bride,
Fred surmises that she is Jewish and therefore that Newman
is Jewish, so matters escalate to more garbage on the lawn
and an increasingly hostile reception in the neighborhood.
To get away for a weekend, Newman and Gert go to the country,
but a "Restricted" inn refuses to allow them to
check in, prompting another nasty outburst from Gert. One
day some of the bigwigs of the Union Crusaders arrive from
out of town, Gert tells Newman that she knew some of them
when she was living in Hollywood, and she urges him to attend
meetings so that they can evade impending terror. However,
when he attends a talk by Father Crighton (Miller’s pseudonym
for Detroit’s Father Coughlin), he perceives that the
groups consists of "morons"; refusing to clap, he
is thrown out of the event. When he walks home, he runs into
a neighbor, who asks him what has been going on, and Newman
gives the most important speech of the film about the need
for community, honesty, and integrity, though the neighbor
is impressed. One evening Newman and Gert go to a movie; as
they walk home, they are cornered by six thugs, who start
slugging. Newman fights back, tells Gert to run home, and
soon Finklestein comes to Newman’s aid in the nick of
time. On hearing that the raped woman has just been pronounced
dead, Newman walks to the police station to report the attack.
Gert follows and is prepared to give the names of the outsiders.
As the film ends, the duty officer at the station asks them
if they are Jewish, and they respond affirmatively. Today,
when vigilantes are roughing up Arab-looking residents in
a manner similar to gaybashing, Focus warns
that racial vigilantism is itself a form of terrorism. Accordingly,
the Political Film Society has nominated Focus
for this year’s best film on human rights. MH
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