Laços Humanos

... or even as secondary characters that drive the narrative with the adult main characters forced into all kinds of silly or sappy happy situations in order to deal with the child or children. This is not one of those films.

It is like the anti-"Meet Me In St. Louis" of the previous year. This American family is one of second generation Americans, descended from European immigrants, who have no particular skills and live in the tenements of Brooklyn. The central character is the daughter, Francie, who is a bit of a dreamer like her father, and in fact she adores her father. She wants to be a writer and has a great thirst for knowledge. There is a very cute exchange between herself and the local librarian when she says she is trying to read her way through the library alphabetically by author but has reached a book that is probably just too much for an eleven year old girl. The brother - hard to tell if he is a year older or younger - is very different from her, not that interested in learning, and would probably not go to school if he was not forced, but that doesn't mean he is a bad kid.

You meet the mother in the family first -Katie Nolan (Dorothy McGuire). This first scene is skillfully written, and you immediately get, before even meeting him, that Katie is always doing battle with the family budget and must scrub floors for a living because her husband is a bad provider. In short she is tired of his nonsense but feels trapped.

Then you meet the father and husband - Johnny (James Dunn). He is a singing waiter when he can find work. He has a good voice, but he has neither gotten serious about singing as a career or outright abandoned it in favor of learning some other trade. Instead he is always dreaming about his ship coming in. He is an alcoholic but not a mean one. And he is exactly the kind of guy who would sweep a girl off her feet when she is 18, but who will never pan out as far as getting serious about work and whom you will be acutely impatient with by age 30. James Dunn won an Oscar for his performance here, and ironically he actually was fired by Fox in the 1930s because of his drinking and Fox was reluctant to take him on again for this role because they did not want a repeat performance.

Katie's sister, Sissy, is played by the boisterous Joan Blondell. Sissy seems to have money - she is always well dressed. And she has just entered into a third marriage without really being sure she was divorced from the second. She has money but no children, which she wants badly. However, she has had several miscarriages. Katie has children but not enough money to really support them. So you feel like some of the undercurrents of tension between the two sisters is that each badly wants something that the other one has and feels that they take it for granted.

One of the great things about this film is that it takes time to go about the neighborhood and let you meet all of the people who live there - the barber, the local saloonkeeper (James Gleason), the sick little girl who lives downstairs, and the local beat cop. Together this weaves an interesting tapestry of atmosphere.

So this is "one year in the life of an American family", but that year is full of hard knocks and also some complete tragedies, but some good events too. It is absolutely worth watching.

This one breaks my heart every time I have seen it. Dorothy McGuire, Peggy Ann Garner, James Dunn, Joan Blondell and all the rest of the cast, without exception, under Elia Kazan's careful tutelage, render portraits that ring so true one is hard put to think of a film where such ensemble work has been surpassed. It is certainly an example of the Hollywood studio system, then in full flower, providing audiences with an experience that touches the emotions without a hint of sentimentality. Its restraint now seems like an artifact of days long gone, with so much current product catering to audiences who seem to demand nothing but mindless pablum and/or brutal sensation. I've never been able to confine myself to a "Ten Best" list of my own but "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" would definitely have a place on it should someone ask me to name such a small number of my all-time favorites.

I watched this movie for the first time on TNT last night and was totally blown away. Peggy Ann Garner who plays Francie is a brilliant actress...and at such an early age. I remember we had to read the book in school in the 1960's (!) but I never saw the movie until now. The characters were so convincing, I was transported to Brooklyn, circa early 1900's and never left for 2 hours and 20 minutes. I went to bed thinking about this movie and woke up this morning with it's after affect still lingering in my mind. A "must see" for everyone of all ages. This one's a gem.

This charming family story has much to offer. The story has a wealth of worthwhile, thoughtful material, plus some good lighter moments, and the production is on-target, not stinting on anything but never drowning out the substance of the story. Several of the cast members give particularly good performances, and most of them are also well-matched with their roles.

Much of the story centers on a couple of interesting relationships. In both cases they are well-acted, and in both cases the relationships suggest a number of themes worth thinking about. Having these two relationships so well-defined and memorably portrayed raises the movie well above the level of a mere sentimental family story.

The relationship between Francie and her father probably makes the movie, and it is wonderfully acted by James Dunn as the somewhat unsteady but thoroughly endearing father, and Peggy Ann Garner (in one of the finest child performances you will see) as the loyal, intelligent daughter.

Dorothy McGuire plays the important but thankless role of Katie, the stern, dour, yet sincere mother, the kind of role that few actresses can handle well. Katie's relationship with her sister (Joan Blondell) is another of the strengths of the movie. Blondell's flamboyant but sensitive portrayal of Sissy wins all the scenes that she is in, yet McGuire is also essential to making them work and to bringing out the themes implied.

The adaptation to the screen is pretty well-conceived. Naturally, much of the depth is going to be lost when you distill a worthwhile novel into a two-hour movie, but the screenplay highlights some very good material, and if it encourages anyone to read the book, so much the better.

A long time ago when I was still working in an automotive shop I taped this movie from KTTV at about three o'clock in the morning, bad reception and commercials and all. The whole thing was a revelation to me. Why, in my years of enjoying all sorts of classic movies at revival houses both in New York and here in Southern California, had I never heard of this movie? For the next three weeks I believe I would come home and watch it almost every day. As an adult child of an alcoholic father, this film moved me in a personal way that I don't think I can even fully investigate, it's just too basic for words. But in terms of cinematic quality alone, this film is a masterpiece. No matter what Elia Kazan did since, we have him to thank for this movie. There is not one false note in the whole of this movie; every actor IS the character they play, most especially Francie Nolan, played to absolute perfection by Peggy Ann Garner. The black and white cinematography is used to its best advantage, the sets are perfect, the music -- contemporary tunes playing along in the background by a rickety-sounding little orchestra -- just "there" enough to provide the auditory backdrop that is the soundtrack of the times, and the emotional intensity and pacing is even, never heavy-handed, and consistent from beginning to end. This is probably the most perfect and authentic film of the black and white era. Hopefully the reason 20th Century Fox has delayed the DVD release is that they're enhancing the package with some special features that devotees of this movie like myself will really enjoy. When the movie came out on VHS I ran to buy it. It will be the same with the DVD.