Elia Kazan Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Bosley Crowther

Critical Essay by Bosley Crowther

The warm and compassionate story of a slum-pent family in Brooklyn's Williamsburg which was told with such rich and genuine feeling in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," by Betty Smith, has received pictorial embodiment to a remarkably harmonious degree…. If some of the ripe descriptive detail of the original is missing, that is due to the time limitations of the picture. The essential substance has been maintained and presented in a manner which carries tremendous emotional punch.

For the producers have very bravely shunned the more felicitous course of making their film a humorous abstract of neighborhood folklore and folkways and have got to the core of the story which Miss Smith plainly tore from her own heart. That is the rare and tender story of a valiant and sensitive little girl reaching hopefully for spiritual fulfillment in a wretchedly meager home. It is the story of the wondrous love...
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