\u201cA Tree Grows in Brooklyn\u201d tells the story of the Nolan family.\u00a0 Johnny and Katie and their two school age children Francie and Neeley are a poor family living in Williamsburg Brooklyn and the story takes place close to the turn of the previous century (circa 1900).\u00a0 Johnny is a singing waiter who lives for the day when his ship comes in but mostly, he drinks.\u00a0 Katie makes the money that keeps the family alive by working as a cleaning woman in the tenement building they live in.\u00a0 In several of the scenes we find her on her knees scrubbing the floors and staircases of the building.\u00a0 Francie is a very smart and sensitive girl who wants to read every book in the library and grow up to be a writer.\u00a0 She has a close relationship with her father who favors her love of learning and idealism.\u00a0 This puts her in constant conflict with her level-headed mother who is determined to make her children successful by avoiding the \u201cdreamy ideas\u201d of her husband and teach them to work hard in life.\u00a0 Neeley is a down to earth child of his environment and doesn\u2019t suffer any angst over his downscale existence.\u00a0 He has his mother\u2019s temperament and rolls with the punches.<\/p>\n
The movie tracks the downward trajectory of Johnny as he despairs of supporting his family.\u00a0 But the one good thing he does for Francie is fake a move to another neighborhood that allows Francie to attend a much better public school than the one in her own neighborhood.\u00a0 This opens her up to influences that teach her that in addition to enthusiasm a person has to \u201csee the world as it really is.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Katie becomes pregnant, she tells Johnny that Francie will have to leave school to work to make up for Katie\u2019s absence while she nurses the infant.\u00a0 Johnny decides to do whatever it takes to save Francie from dropping out of school.\u00a0 On Christmas Eve night he hears his daughter talk about the teacher who said that she must \u201csee the world as it really is.\u201d\u00a0 And that resonates with his situation.\u00a0 He must see himself as he really is.\u00a0 He kisses her good night and walks out into the snow in his threadbare jacket and pants and goes looking for work as a sandhog for the burgeoning subway systems that were tunneling all over New York at that time.<\/p>\n
Shortly after New Year Day the local police officer Mr. McShane comes to tell Katie that her husband is in a hospital in Manhattan having collapsed with pneumonia.\u00a0 Shortly after she reaches him, he dies.\u00a0 The funeral opens up Katie\u2019s eyes as hundreds of Johnny\u2019s friends pay their respects.\u00a0 Her astonishment convinces Francie that her mother never understood her father and is a callous person.<\/p>\n
Johnny\u2019s friend, the local saloon owner Mr. Garrity, offers to let the two children work after school at his business setting up food for the free lunch.\u00a0 Katie lets slip that she had decided that Francie would have had to quit school.\u00a0 Hearing this Francie becomes truly embittered against her mother and fixes on the fact that letting her finish school had come once again through her father\u2019s influence.\u00a0 She accuses Katie of never having loved Johnny in life.<\/p>\n
But the birth of the child at home forces Katie and Francie to bond and allows mother and daughter to see each other\u2019s side of things.\u00a0 With the help from the after-school jobs Francie and Neeley graduate grammar school and Katie predicts that the children will finish out high school too and go on to better than lives than their parents had.<\/p>\n
And the movie has several other memorable characters.\u00a0 Sissie who is Katie\u2019s flirtatious sister and the scandal of the neighborhood is on her third husband.\u00a0 \u00a0Katie loves her but feels she is a bad influence on her children.\u00a0 In each of Sissy\u2019s earlier marriages her pregnancies ended in stillborn babies.\u00a0 But a comment from Francie about the advantages of hospitals as a maternity setting, convinces Sissy to have her child in a hospital.\u00a0 And the hospital uses oxygen to rouse the unresponsive new born.\u00a0 And this probably saves Sissie\u2019s present marriage.<\/p>\n
Katie\u2019s mother is a wise old woman who warns Katie against hardening her heart against the good things in life just because they don\u2019t lead to monetary success.\u00a0 And Officer McShane is a friend to Johnny, Katie and the children.\u00a0 In several scenes he provides help to the family.\u00a0 After Johnny\u2019s death, he lets his intentions be known that he would like to court Katie.\u00a0 Katie agrees and at that point even Francie is open to the idea.\u00a0 So, the movie ends with Katie\u2019s family finally able to cope with life in the modern world.<\/p>\n
The cast does a phenomenal job.\u00a0 Dorothy McGuire is Katie, Joan Blondell is Sissy, James Dunn is Johnny and Lloyd Nolan is Officer McShane.\u00a0 And even some of the bit parts are memorable and splendidly acted.\u00a0 The sets are evocative of Old Brooklyn and even mention of some of the place names still brings a smile to my face when I hear them in the movie.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Elia Kazan directed.<\/p>\n
This is Camera Girl\u2019s favorite movie of all time.\u00a0 It speaks to her of families and it exhibits many of the qualities of life in Brooklyn that we still experienced two generations after the Nolan\u2019s time.\u00a0 I also think she identifies herself and me in the Nolans.\u00a0 She as the hard-headed and hard-working woman and me as the ne\u2019er do well but idealistic (and handsome and charming) husband.\u00a0 But the one difference between myself and this Nolan guy is I was born lucky and he was born to fail.\u00a0 But we watch this movie once or twice every year and we always end up feeling good.\u00a0 Highly recommended for hard-working wives and lazy husbands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cA Tree Grows in Brooklyn\u201d tells the story of the Nolan family.\u00a0 Johnny and Katie and their two school age children Francie and Neeley are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[3398,3399,3400,2100,3401,43,38,1355],"class_list":["post-16700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-a-tree-grows-in-brooklyn","tag-dorothy-mcguire","tag-james-dunn","tag-joan-blondell","tag-lloyd-nolan","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n