Gordon Parks is a still photographer. He directed The Learning Tree, his first motion picture. It is still born. Dare I say primitive? Gordon Parks is black. If he wasn't nobody would pay much attention to his picture. But he is, and everybody is giving the film much more attention and praise than it deserves….
I am also sorry that the first massive, lavish, technicolor, mass distributed film by a black man should be so reassuring … like Green Pastures. Parks' remembrance of his boyhood is unaffected but middle-brow, like The Supremes doing Frank Sinatra tunes. The only charitable thing I can think of to say about it is that it is free of self-pity and bombast…. The Learning Tree has some of the stiltedness and some of the sensitivity of Truman Capote's childhood reminiscences. Does the idea of a black Truman Capote strike you as oddly as it does me? Does the world need another Capote of any color? Let's try another. I think Parks sees himself as a mini Orson Welles. In addition to directing, he wrote the screenplay, from his novel of the same name, and scored the film. I guess I am scoring it as well. Only God can make a tree.
Susan Rice, "Reviews: 'The Learning Tree'," in Take One (copyright © 1969 by Unicorn Publishing Corp.), Vol. 2, No. 3, January-February 1969, p. 25.
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