How long is a tree grows in brooklyn

Faithful adaptation of classic family story.

NR 1945 128 minutes

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What Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the father in the family dies. The mother and daughter have a difficult relationship, though they come to terms in the end. The family has a hard time communicating directly with each other. One of the characters drinks heavily.

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What's the Story?

The Nolan family lives in a Brooklyn tenement, struggling to rise from poverty. Francie Nolan (Peggy Ann Garner) adores her father, Johnny (James Dunn), a dreamer with a drinking problem, and respects but resents her down-to-earth, practical mother, Katie (Dorothy McGuire). Francie dreams of going to a better school in a wealthier neighborhood, and her father makes it possible by telling the principal that she's moving in with a fictitious wealthy aunt. But when Katie gets pregnant again, she decides that Francie should leave school. And then Johnny dies. Devastated, Francie is angry with her mother, feeling that her mother didn't love Johnny enough and doesn't love her enough either. But when her mother has the baby, Francie sees that she loves them both and that Katie hates having to be practical and "hard." A kind policeman asks permission to court Katie, and Francie knows that their life will be easier, and that her father and what they shared will be with her always.

Is It Any Good?

James Dunn won an Oscar for his masterful portrayal of Johnny Nolan in A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, which is based on the novel by Betty Smith. The Nolans have a great deal of love but a lot of difficulty showing it. Although they clearly love each other, Johnny and Katie have too many shattered expectations to accept tenderness from each other, as we see when he comes home with the food from the party and sees her with her hair down, and when she tries to tell him how much she likes hearing him sing "Annie Laurie."

They also have trouble being honest and direct about their circumstances and their feelings. They have to move to a cheaper apartment, but insist -- to themselves and to everyone else -- that they're doing it to get more sunlight. When Katie decides that she wants her sister back in her life, she sends the message via the insurance collector. When Francie tries raising the subject of the school she wants to attend in a roundabout way, Katie tells her to speak more directly. But Johnny lets her tell him in her own way, and, over Katie's objections, makes it possible for her dream to come true. Francie has a hard time understanding that Katie loves her and relies on her, until Katie is in labor and almost does not know what she is saying. This is a good opportunity to talk about the ways that families do (and do not) communicate with each other. Older kids may also want to discuss the impact that Johnny's drinking and unreliability had on Katie and why it was different for Francie.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

• Families can talk about what Francie's teacher meant about the difference between imagination and pipe dreams. What does the title refer to? Why did the members of the family have such a hard time talking to each other about what mattered to them? Why does the family use the word "sick" to describe Johnny's alcoholism? Why does Johnny seem so sad when Francie talks with him about being "sick"? Why was it so important to Kate that the death certificate be changed?

Movie Details

• In theaters: February 28, 1945
• On DVD or streaming: November 9, 2010
• Cast: Dorothy McGuire, James Dunn, Joan Blondell
• Director: Elia Kazan
• Studio: Twentieth Century Fox
• Genre: Drama
• Run time: 128 minutes
• MPAA rating: NR
• Last updated: February 24, 2022

Our Editors Recommend

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

  Faithful adaptation of classic family story.

  age 10+

• To Kill a Mockingbird

  Masterpiece with crucial lessons about prejudice.

  age 12+

• The Diary of Anne Frank

  Poignant adaptation is still powerful decades later.

  age 12+

For kids who love books

• Coming-of-Age Books
• Classic Books for Kids
• See all recommended movie lists

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

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"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" reviews and reader reviews of the book 📖 by Betty Smith, book rating - MyBook.

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Reviews and Reviews for Book

Amazing! Cult! Very gentle and full of love, the novel by American writer Betty Smith - "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". The book was published in 1941 and immediately sold out with a circulation of 600,000 copies. The story revolves around the Nolan family. But the main characters are Francie and Neely Nolan. Francie is a teenage girl with a huge heart living in a "little world called Brooklyn". Her father, Jerry, is a fun-loving, drink-loving, odd-job-worker. Wise mother Katie, with Nili, aunts Evie and Sissy with their most interesting stories. But the deeper I got acquainted with the book, the more I wanted to get there in those years, to the old black-and-white Brooklyn, to help Francie and Neely collect all the bottles in the district, to somehow help replenish the budget of the Nolan family, and at least somehow protect children from forced child labor. Go to the library with Francie, choose books together, and then sit comfortably under that famous tree to discuss her characters. And in the evening, returning to sit in a cozy chair and listen to their family stories, which are full of sincere conversations, simple but delicious food and a warm atmosphere, aura. On the one hand, the story is easy to read, and on the other hand, the letters are saturated with the severity of life, and despite the poverty of those days, difficulties, this family kept great love, confidence and faith in itself.
Definitely, be sure to meet the Nolans. I assure you, in their world, you will love it.

PS. "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" , added to my personal library of books, ("The Fault in the Stars", "Serenity", "Not Like the Others" "We're Expired", "I Paint Your Sky", "The House Where ...", etc.) where the main character or heroes, despite their young age and difficulties, the games of hard fate, look at the world with different eyes, full of love and despair, but at the same time with great faith in themselves.

September 11, 2018

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NNNToniK

Rated the book

Falling in love with the book from the first line failed. But after the first hundred pages, this story literally took roots in my soul. I fell in love with her seriously and forever.

Up to this point, I wanted to write about the book like this: a coming-of-age novel, a standard motivational plot. The character is placed on the bottom and climbs with all his might to a better life. It is clear in advance how everything will end.

Yes, that's right. But you can play the same story in different ways. Betty Smith described it all incredibly soulful and atmospheric. She made me sincerely worry about all the characters in the novel. To be surprised at the wisdom and resilience of an uneducated woman - the mother of the main character.

The book is both bitter and touching. There is a lot of injustice and self-esteem in it. Some parts make me want to go back and re-read a few more times.

All teenage girls must read, and their mothers will not leave indifferent the book.

December 1, 2019

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Kseniya_Ustinova

Rated the book

Just a little bit we didn’t grow together with this book, it felt like I was waiting for Fanny Flagg, and the regiment felt it. But no, Fanny wrote a couple of generations later and rather “reassured” readers, but Betty Smith, on the contrary, rebels and swears. The Tree was published back in 1943, looking at this date, the book looks like a loud voice of feminism. Absolutely all the men of the book are useless, spineless, drunkards, sick, stupid, not striving for anything, petty. A man only creates problems, adds work and suffering to women. In 43, another war took even more men out of the country, raising women many steps higher, making them proud working women, heads of the family, not only within the family, but also openly to society. And now a woman can loudly and pompously tell how she dragged children on her shoulders, and no one helped her, and the man, on the contrary, even interfered. I do not belittle their exploits, the rules of behavior of previous centuries are in many ways inadequate for me and of course they did not have much choice. It just doesn't come across very well in the book, in my opinion. Too one-sided and hyperbolic (according to my feelings). The Francie family moved to America to starve for the feeling of a "free country", but the country does not give them any freedom. Cursing a illegitimate child is portrayed as a stupid relic of the past, which will be fought for a long time to come. I was a little stressed by the bookkeeping in the family, all these insurances, shirt-fronts and other strange expenses that led to regular hunger. At the same time, I don’t feel much suffering in the characters. For me, the book is generally written very dryly. There are separate emotional scenes about charity, about school, descriptions of imaginary food recipes. But the very life of the heroes is terrible, creepy, hungry, described as a matter of course. Most of all, I was disappointed by the “growing up of the main character” stated in the annotation. The main character of the book is feminism. But Francie either leads the story, or shines aside. And the book ends on a very young heroine, her most interesting and complex decisions will be in the next ten years, about which we will not be told.

I overestimated a little for a certain historicity of what is happening, the museumification of a specific era in a specific area. In general, it didn't work.

October 22, 2018

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scinema

Rated the book

I still wonder what brought me to this book - I'm not a big fan of hyped novelties. However, sometimes they are very personal, but not in this case. Of course, everything written here is subjective, I do not pretend to anything.
So, we have a "family saga", if you can call it that. Gg - Francie, #not the same as all the girl, skinny and awkward, with whom no one wants to be friends, because she is strange, and her mother regrets rather than loves. Yes, and she also loves to read and reads a book (?) a day. In my opinion, it is difficult to come up with a big pattern. It is worth mentioning that Francie's actions also raised questions, sometimes they were very incomprehensible and unreasonable.
Her relatives also did not inspire confidence and understanding in me, only Sissy - Aunt Francie more or less sunk into my soul. All the rest - not a bit. The whole story as a whole is kind of bland, boring. I understand why it is a classic in the US, the life of the people of Brooklyn in the early 19The 00s are shown here very well, but the whole point is that there is life, but there is no plot as such. It was boring to read, the book is filled with a huge amount of unnecessary specifics, the author's style (although perhaps this is the translator's fault) is dry and insipid, sometimes even too primitive.
In a word - no book. There were no moments in it that pissed me off, but there was also nothing that I liked in the slightest.
In general, I don’t even want to talk about this topic, I’ll put the book in exchange and forget it, 6/10

January 15, 2019

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Rated the book

I admit that this is a good book (with some reservations). I understand why our readers might love her. But for the life of me, I didn't get into it. For me "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is a boring everyday novel, somewhat blackish and, in addition, with a blurred ending, which seems to remove the author's further responsibility for the fate of the main character.

And, as for me, the cover of the book is… unsuccessful. Our publishers went to great lengths to decorate the more depressing original cover - and voila! No, the cover is beautiful - a lilac background, a sweet girl, and everything is so cute, so gentle that it is misleading. I was expecting a good book about growing up, family love, sort of a modernized version of Little Women. And instead, typical problems of disadvantaged layers were dumped on me: poverty, alcoholism, lack of education, early pregnancies, early unhappy marriages, perverts, pedophilia ... A whole bunch of troubles, what is there.

Starring (sort of) a girl from a dysfunctional family Francie . Her father is an alcoholic, and between glasses he moonlights as a waiter (and how does he do it?). Francie's mother married him early and immediately began to give birth, not even caring about whether she and her husband could provide children (and why?). At the same time, the mother loves her youngest son more, and scores a little on Francie. The girl, meanwhile, grows up, goes to school, reads something, thinks about sex, almost becomes a victim of a local maniac, goes to school again, reads something again ...

Formally, this is a coming-of-age novel, but it's no coincidence that I added "as if", because the personality of the main character is lost in the flickering of other characters. There are inexplicably many characters in the book, given the lack of a plot. Nothing really happens in the book. The plot is not a long retelling of other people's stories, not a senseless shuffling of characters. At Betty Smith constantly someone gives birth, someone dies, someone gets money, someone loses it and lives in complete poverty. But there is no plot. Characters remain within predetermined boundaries. Francie is also not developing properly, I have nothing to say about her. What is she, Francie? Interesting or boring? Thoughtful or superficial? Or is she… none? And this is not me, a snickering brute, I perfectly understand what trials fell on the lot of the main character. But her experiences are described as if from afar, there is no penetration into her personality, there is no nerve. If something bad happens to Francie, I don't feel her pain. Honestly, it would be better if there were fewer characters and extraneous stories, and more of the main character.

The ending should be hopeful (you can't kill a tree, it still grows, no matter how you cut or burn it...), but it's too... vague, or something. As if they want to untie you from the heroes as soon as possible, “and think of everything else yourself!”. Perhaps, if I were the same age as the heroine, I would now squeal with delight, but at 25 I am rather at a loss. This book did nothing for me. There was no pleasure from the very beginning. The only plus is that I found out what we advertised so fiercely. I agree with another reviewer: this is exactly the “plot simulator”, and it is worth reading this very, very patient.

Dixi.

November 19, 2020

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Andrey Reutov

Rated the book

A wonderful story with which I lived a couple of months of unhurried evening reading. It's a pity to part with the clever Francis, her mother Katie and the charming Sisi. I recommend to everyone!

November 21, 2021

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Lyubov Buntina

Rated the book

Insanely deep and life-affirming book. At first, reading was difficult due to a significant amount of detail, but later I appreciated their presence.

I really liked the main character, Francie. I also liked her transformation - the difference between her 11-year-old and 17-year-old is simply colossal. And yes, all the other characters are good too.

Of all the characters, only the scoundrel Lee Raynor and the mother of the main character, Cathy, did not like. The latter had no education, no highly paid job, no status in society, but there was more than enough ambition. Naturally, no social status and education give the right to treat anyone with contempt, but this pride of Katie Nolan was annoying, by the way, as was her obvious preference for her eldest daughter of her son Cornelius, or as everyone called him - Neely . It was very nice to see that despite this separation of the children, Francie and Neely were friends.

However, Katy also has dignity - despite the lack of education and, consequently, high income, she managed to raise two children and arrange a better life for her third child, a daughter named Lori. Katie set an excellent personal example for Francie and Neely, thanks to which the first broke out into people at a fairly early age, and the second began to earn extra money earlier, which can also be considered a kind of springboard to adulthood.

In general, I liked the book, I will definitely recommend it for reading.

July 14, 2022

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[email protected]

Appreciated the book

This is the same book, after which you need time to think everything over, rethink .. there is an interesting aftertaste; bright sadness, joy for the future of the heroes and the unrelenting past. It will be difficult to reorganize my thoughts on a new book, because it made a very strong impression on me. At first glance, nothing special, but not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance. I wept bitterly when, at the end of the story, Frances ironed her brother Nilli's shirt, as she once did her father, and noticed the striking resemblance of her brother to her father.
In general, all emotions cannot be conveyed. This is definitely one of my favorite books now! I highly recommend reading.

December 19, 2018

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Julia Buchbinder

Rated the book

I have no words. .. I was shocked by this book! Now this is one of my favorite pieces. How is it written! It is read in one breath, the syllable is light, it flows like a stream. Emotions are inexpressible, and joy for the heroes and tears, I confess, I cried several times. Now I will definitely buy a paper book for my library!

July 23, 2022

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[email protected]

Rated the book

Complete delight, the case when you want to read excitedly, but it seems to be a pity that there is less and less left! Dear Francis, your tree will sprout all obstacles! I highly recommend the book, kind and bright

September 29, 2021

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"Reader's Diary" "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"

"A Reader's Diary". "A tree grows in Brooklyn" - Radio Sputnik, 03/03/2020

"Reader's Diary". "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"

In this issue we discuss the amazing novel by Betty Smith, which has not been translated into Russian for a criminally long time. Formally, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a teen novel about 11-year-old Francie Nolan. So why did World War II soldiers take him to the front more often than others?

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