Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Ed-Shullivan This was director Elia Kazan's first attempt in the director's chair and you certainly would not have known it. Thank goodness it was the beginning of a very prestigious career for Mr. Kazan, winning twice for Best Director at the Academy Awards in 1948 for Gentleman's Agreement and again in 1955 for On The Waterfront.This black and white film pulls no punches in the telling of the hardships faced by Katie (Dorothy McGuire) and Johnny Nolan (James Dunn won for best supporting actor) and their two children daughter Francie (Peggy Ann Garner) and son Neeley (Ted Donaldson). The father of the household Johnny, makes a sporadic living as a part time waiter and singer and a full time heavy drinker. To try and make ends meet, the children's mother Katie works washing floors and she makes every penny count in their household. Francie loves her parents and she has a very special bond with her drunkard father as they both dream big. Mother Katie does not have time for the dreams of her husband as someone in their household needs to face the reality of paying the rent and the life insurance payments for a family of four which come due each month, and that responsibility falls directly on the shoulders of mom Katie.Katie Nolan has a sister who the children call Aunt Sissy (Joan Blondell) who is pretty and her looks allow for her to have a steady stream of both suitors and husbands which is in direct contrast with sister Katie's hard working and strict rules for her children.There are fantastic supporting roles such as that of police constable McShane (Lloyd Nolan) who always seems to be around when the Nolan's are having troubles, and troubles they do have. Although the early 1900's were a much simpler time, life's struggles were much more difficult and this film will make us all appreciate how easy we have had it compared to the many families who barely got by each day with the most simplest of requirements like shelter, food and clothing.I loved this film and the message it extends to us the audience. Appreciate what you do have and more importantly appreciate each other because you can pick your friends, but you cannot pick your family.I give the film a 9 out of 10 rating

kijii This classic movie, based on Betty Smith's autobiographical novel, was Elia Kazan's directorial debut. Though the entire cast was wonderful, James Dunn won a well-deserved Oscar, here, for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.Since this story is about a poor family in greater New York City around the turn of the century, I sometimes get it mixed up with that of George Stevens' I Remember Mama. However, any momentary confusion is soon rectified when I recall the cast and the character difference between the two maternal figures (Irene Dunne in I Remember Mama and Dorothy McGuire in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. McGuire was great at playing 'hard' and serious characters, as she later did in Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement and Mann's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960).To me, this is one of those many priceless movies in which life is viewed from a child's point of view (how they see--and feel--things that are going on around them and within the family. The protagonist, here, is 12 or 13 year-old Francie Nolan (Peggy Ann Garner). Her acting may be a little over-sentimental, but I think her role may have called for it. On the other hand, Ted Donaldson is refreshingly realistic as her younger brother, Neeley.The Nolan family is poor and has learned to live by all of the cost- savings means humanly possible. For example, the two children go to a cheaper school and work on Saturdays as 'rag pickers,' gathering trash on the streets and selling it to the neighborhood junk man. On Christmas Eve, they wait until all of the other Christmas trees have been sold and then gather at the tree lot as the vendor throws his leftover trees to anyone whom can catch them.The children's mother, Katie Nolan (Dorothy McGuire), works hard doing domestic work, cutting corners, and being the disciplinarian of the family so they can survive. As a result, those around her often see her as 'hard.' Her husband, Johnny Nolan, aka 'The Brooklyn Thrush' (James Dunn), works at night as a singing waiter for a small salary--but mainly for tips. He is a pipe dreamer, a romantic, and a drunk. Everyone in the neighborhood, including the local policeman, Officer McShane (Lloyd Nolan), knows it—but they all love him anyway--and learn to call him 'sick' when he comes home drunk. Johnny fills Francie's head full of fanciful dreams about being discovered by an impresario and telling her what he will do for the family when he is discovered and 'his ship comes in.' When Francie dreams of going to a better school down the block, her father helps her get into it by making up an address that is within the school district.Katie's fun-loving sister, Aunt Sissy (Joan Blondell), often comes to visit and often has a new husband—'Aunt Sissy has gone and done it again.' She, too, wants to see that the children are not too hardened by Katie and that they get to enjoy their life. Although everyone wants Francie to be protected from life's hardships, soon must see things as they are.

adsqueiroz In the early 1900s, the Nolans, a poor Brooklyn tenement family, fight not only to survive, but also to improve their lives. The studious Francie worships her father, waiter and aspiring singer Johnny, despite him being an alcoholic and a pipe dreamer. With a strong temper, mother Katie holds the family together, including a flirtatious and impetuous aunt. Dorothy McGuire is a perfect mother who keeps her family together, but loses and regains some humanity in the process. She was an underrated actress in her time, always gave great performances. Peggy Ann Garner in one of the best child performances I have seen as an intelligent and caring daughter. What an incredible and moving film; made me cry many times while watching girl Francie reverencing her father and helping out her mother. A film worth seeing more than once.

Scott Amundsen Possibly only a director with an eye for gritty reality like the great Elia Kazan could come up with a successful adaptation of Betty Smith's classic novel. With the help of screen writers Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, with some additional dialogue by Anita Loos (uncredited), Kazan manages to capture the atmosphere of the time and the place; he also demonstrates his considerable skill with characterization. The result is a movie that in spite of considerable flaws has the same raw emotional power that has made the book such an essential.The setting is the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn around the turn of the Twentieth Century. The original novel covered a period of about ten years in the lives of the Nolan family, which is the movie's first major gaffe: in having Peggy Ann Garner and Ted Donaldson play Francie and Neeley Nolan for the duration of the picture, he suspends the story in time and thus makes for a rather confusing adaptation of a book that spanned a decade and was about a young girl's coming of age.Be that as it may, Peggy Ann Garner is luminous as Francie; Oscar-winner James Dunn turns in solid support as her beloved father Johnny, and Dorothy McGuire, a brilliant actress who never really received her due in Hollywood, is sensational as matriarch Katie Nolan, a woman who marries a man she is madly in love with only to discover he is a no-good drunk. He is not abusive or anything like that, it's just that married to Johnny, the twin burdens of the household duties and earning enough money to live on fall on Katie's shoulders.This is a beautiful film. As an adaptation of the novel it fails in some key points (read it and you'll see), but overall it is a fine and moving piece of cinematic art, well-deserving of its status as an American classic.