A Tree, Grows In Brooklyn (20th Century-Fox), coming from a big Hollywood studio, is man-bites-dog news. Instead of sweetening up Betty Smith's exuberant best-seller and furnishing ten sure laughs for every carefully shock-absorbed tear, such ex-New Yorkers as Tess Slesinger, one of the writers, and Elia Kazan, the director, have turned it into a sober and reasonably truthful story of life among the lowly.
In the process of translation, it must be granted, some of the fun and richness of the book are lost. It would be a pleasure to see more of full-blown, man-hungry Aunt Sissy (bountifully played by Joan Blondell); the character of the Nolan mother (Dorothy McGuire) is oversimplified; and such people as the shy policeman suitor of her widowhood (Lloyd Nolan) and her squareheaded little boy (Ted Donaldson) are skimpily noticed.
The clangorous redolence of Brooklyn streets and schools and stores and tenement staircases, though reproduced with loving care, seems canned and trimmed. Indeed the picture's outstanding weakness comes of its attempt to recreate the life of a big city in a studio, as if under glass, instead of diving into the real city and taking its chances. Working so far from the real thing, it is easy to forget even details which could be remedied in a studio. When mourners shudder in a winter cemetery, their breaths ought to show; and if a hot iron is left on a shirt, the shirt ought to suffer the consequences. Yet A Tree Grows In Brooklyn is much more true-to-life than most movies; and much more likable as well.
It tells of the crucial year during which Francie Nolan (Peggy Ann Garner) ceases to be a child. It is a year during which Francie learns that her charming, drunken, incompetent father (James Dunn) may be dearly loved, but not indiscriminately worshipped. She develops, and overcomes, a stony hostility towards her bitter, pennypinching mother. She endures her father's piteous death and—in a bold, overloaded sequence—watches her mother writhe in childbed. Through such experiences, and with the help of a kind teacher, she begins to transmute her weakness for fantasy-building into the tempered imagination of a writer.
Secondarily, and still more effectively, the film tells a story of irremediable antagonisms and inadequacies in human relationships. Some of its best scenes are those in which the long-estranged parents try vainly to make up, and in which the father and daughter realize, beyond any chance of forgetting, that she is growing up and that he never will.
Peggy Ann Garner, a lovely child, is perfectly cast as the plain-pretty, primly sensitive little heroine. Dorothy McGuire (Claudia), though much too young to play her mother, again proves herself one of the most accomplished young U.S. actresses. But the standout of the picture is ex-star Jimmy Dunn as the weak, gallant father. Publicity writers did not exaggerate, for once, when they called his performance "the most sensational comeback in years."