MovieChat Forums > A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Discussion > Their poverty is 'sanitized'???

Their poverty is 'sanitized'???

posted 16 years ago by Boyo-2
25 replies | jump to latest

"Tree" is playing at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC as part of a Joan Blondell retrospective. The VILLAGE VOICE had an encapsulated review saying that the movie was good but that the poverty portrayed on-screen is 'sanitized', making it seem as though its a very 'Hollywood' version of what poverty is like. I don't feel that way at all and I was wondering if that ever occured to anyone else who knows and loves this movie as much as I do. You see the fact that they are poor all the time..Katie having to work, the kids having to buy old bread and trade rags for pennies, the insurance guy noticing the rug is tattered, and Johnny bringing home leftovers from the wedding he sang at. There are many other examples of this and I just that the movie is very realistic in that sense. Its not as though they just 'say' how poor they are and there is no evidence of that..

[–] downtownblah 16 years ago

Yes, it was sanitized. I read the novel within the last six months and being cold inside and outside must have been very hard to deal with and most definitely was missing from the movie. Getting long underwear for Christmas does not cut to the depth in which they all suffered from the chill, and it was probably a depressed immune system from the cold and the alcoholism (probably sudden abstinence from it as well) which led to the pneumonia, killing Johnny in his 30s.

As for the hunger, if I had seen the movie before reading the book, I would have thought they were adequately fed. It was clear from Francie's diary entries in the book, when Johnny's alcoholism kept him from bringing in steady income, they all suffered. The can bank in the closet was depleted often for food emergencies. Katie, who was not portrayed as having any imagination in the movie, in the book had to make up stories like going to the Artic to make it more of a game to the kids to deal with the very strict rationing of food during these times.

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] GeorgyGirl422 15 years ago

Another thing you learn from reading the book is that Katie, after washing loads of laundry and scrubbing floors all day on her hands and knees in lieu of rent, still managed to feed them, mostly with stale bread which she fixed several ways. Stale bread, seasoned with ketchup or a bit of onion, potatoes or if very lucky, a bit of ground beef. I loved the description of "meat loaf" made with no meat at all, just a paste of bread and water and a few seasonings, topped with ketchup. "Coffee" consisted of very little coffee and a lot of bitter chicory. And if Johnny was sober enough to work, he might bring home a bag of leftovers from a party. But the book also described the times when he was not working and there was no money for food at all, and no money for coal for the stoves either. If you want to know how things really were for the family, it's really helpful to read the book as well as watch the movie.

Read also the vivid description of Katie's battle with lice, nits and disease which spread like wildfire in the closely-packed schools. Ah, the wonders of kerosene and garlic.

[–] taylorje 14 years ago

In the book, Mr. McGarrity had the hots for Katie, and that's why he hired the children to work for him. He hoped it would score points with her. Didn't work, though.

[–] sonnythefat 13 years ago

Sorry I Do not think that the Poverty was Sanitized,
I came from a very poor family I think I know better that middle class "Ponderers"
But nothing is worse that the Way most "middle class" people treat the "poor" It is worse for us that being hungry.
That is why "middle class" pepole are "first to the wall" in a revoltion

[–] ShanaLD 13 years ago

Actually the first on the wall are usually the rich and highly educated. Middle class people may ignore the plight of the poor, but it is many of the wealthy that help keep them poor. Try reading "The President and the Assassin" by Scott Miller. That book is about the assassination of McKinley. It looks at a lot of the politcal things that were happening at the time and the life of the assassin himself. To read some of the things the "higher ups" in society have to say about their workers whose wages they constantly decrease while giving them longer hours is saddening. To see how so many families had to struggle and survive on scraps of bread and sometimes nothing at all while having to work fourteen hour days is sickening.

Personally, I grew up middle class, but both of my parents grew up poor. My father was the second of ten children. He was raised on a sustenance farm in a two bedroom house. When my father came to the U.S., he had to work in a button factory at night while he went to school during the day. He only graduated college in his thirties just before I was born and became an engineer.

My mother's family was even poorer until her mother came to the U.S. on her own, got a job with the phone company and then brought my mother and uncle. She provided all she could for them but they barely just scratched working class for the longest time until she eventually worked her way up to manager.

I have family members that are still poor. Whenever my parents go to visit the family they go with two extra suitcases so they can bring shoes, clothing, books and other things for friends and family members that haven't been able to do better. Right now, my mother is trying to help my cousin with going back to college so that he can provide a good income for his family.

My parents were both lucky though. Sure they worked hard to get where they are today, but they were also given opportunities others never got the luxury of having, like the teacher that encouraged my father to stay in college no matter what.

You may have been able to identify with the poverty as depicted in the movie, but you need to understand at that time it was so much worse to be poor then. At least now kids can get free school lunches and things like health clinics, medicare and scholarships exist (but who knows how long that will last with how things are going in our government).

So yes, the movie was sanitized.

[–] spiderwort (11) 7 years ago

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[–] parisel 16 years ago

I have a friend who dismisses this film for being literally too sanitized, or rather too sanitary, especially in the winter, living in an unheated walk up. It's too hard to be that clean and healthy in such grinding poverty.

I'm sure she's right, but I still love it.

I guess it's like looking at clouds. You see one thing and I see another. Peace.

[–] tmaj48 16 years ago

Mainstream movies of the time couldn't really get into the darker aspects of
such books, so the film had to be somewhat censored in its approach to the
Nolans' poverty. One of the many memorable scenes in the book is when little
Francie and Neeley have to get vaccinated; they go to the clinic by themselves
because their parents are both working. They've both spent the morning making
mud pies, so they're dirty when they arrive at the clinic. The doctor sneers
at them in disgust and delivers an arrogant lecture to his nurse about the
ignorance of the poor, who are obviously too stupid to keep themselves clean.
Little Francie, who hears his speech, is offended and tells him off, warning
him not to repeat his lecture in front of her little brother. The doctor is taken by surprise by Francie's reaction, since he assumes that, as one of the underclass, she must be too imbecilic to have even understood what he was saying. It's a great
scene about the snobbery of the more fortunate towards the underprivileged
(which is probably even more prevalent today than then), but most American
movies would prefer not to acknowledge the existence of class inequalities
in U.S. society. The movie ends with Francie and Neeley pitying their little
sister because she won't have the 'fun' they had growing up in poverty--it's a
flippant observation in the book, but the way the film signs off with that
feeling implies that the Nolans were "poor, but happy," when the book version
has a more naturalistic view. Good movie; GREAT book.

I'm not crying, you fool, I'm laughing!

[–] spiderwort (11) 7 years ago

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[–] amgor863-2 15 years ago

My father grew up in a similar atmosphere. He called his apartment a 'cold water flat", meaning heat from a coal stove and not elevator. They shared a bathroom, located in the hallway with several other tenants. It was clean and the inhabitants were healthy. His father was also an alcoholic, like Johnny Nolan. My grandmother scrubbed floors in lieu of rent and worked nights cleaning. Instead of two children, there were five. This was the 1930s in New York City. When he watched this movie, he did say that it was realistic in many ways. I've read the book several times and did note that the poverty was much more pronounced. When this film was made, Hollywood did tend to gloss over a lot. I always thought that the film version, too quickly introduced McShane and it was not realistic that the children would so readily accept him as their new father.

[–] spenshel2 13 years ago

If you want UNsanitized poverty, watch "Angela's Ashes".

[–] Kieselguhr 12 years ago

Angela's Ashes was definitely poverty in the raw. I could barely stand to watch it. Though I was never hungry, we lived dirt-poor for the first 18 years of my life. It is a state of mind as much as lack of money.

Given that A tree grows in Brooklyn was filemdt at the end of WWII, I think they portrayed poverty as closely as was possible, while respecting good taste. The scenes before the new baby arrived wererock-bottom poverty as it really could be.

The other aspect of this movie was that many families became fatherless as a result of the war. This was a subtext fo the story, and it was horribly sad. You can only dump so much grief on an audience at one time.

[–] spiderwort (11) 7 years ago

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[–] nycruise-1 11 years ago

Where were all the body lice and cockroaches and rats that those kids would have been exposed to under those conditions?

"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"

[–] Foxlair45 11 years ago

The lice were in the book!

[–] bradford-1 10 years ago

As a previous poster noted, American films of the time could not/would not portray poverty the way it REALLY was. Not just this film, but THE GRAPES OF WRATH, DEAD END, ONE-THIRD OF A NATION and others were all "sanitized" one way or another.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"

[–] spiderwort (11) 7 years ago

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[–] 10 years ago

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[–] Felixthecat34213 9 years ago

I hate it when people assume that because you're poor, you must be dirty...

I grew up fairly poor, but my mother always made sure the house was clean and sanitized, that we were clean, and that we ate (even if it meant she went hungry).

[–] spiderwort (11) 7 years ago

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[–] tmaj48 9 years ago

There were lice in the book, but only insofar as to state that the Nolan children never had them. Katie washed their hair in some kind of kerosene concoction, which not only kept the lice away but also smelled so pungent that
the other kids didn't come too close to Francie and Neeley. This prevented them
from catching lice from the other kids and also kept them safer from the germs
transmitted by the other kids as well. As a result, Neeley and Francie never got sick, and Francie never had to worry about missing school and getting a note sent "home"
to the address of that house that she and Johnny fraudulently claimed was theirs
so that she could attend the school in a nicer neighborhood.

I'm not crying, you fool, I'm laughing!

Hewwo.

[–] filmfanaticNorCal 9 years ago

The Village Voice, being a politically correct rag, of course would dwell and this without understanding the deeper messages and emotions of the movie. The movie wasn't about depicting all the nuances of poverty because most people back then knew what they were. They knew about lice and cockroaches and rats and didn't need a movie to educate them about it. I thought the movie portrayed the life in a tenement in Brooklyn well; bathtub/sink in the kitchen, 5 story walkup, saving every penny, collecting rags ....This is a great movie which depicts the lives of many families in post WWII America, mine included. These were people who had grown up during the depression then went through WWII. They had all those scars and when it came to raising a family things often got difficult. People drank to forget what they gone through during the Great Depression and the war. My grandfather ended up in an insane asylum after losing all his money in the Crash. Later, my Grandmother and her three kids were put out on the street by the Sheriff in 1932 because they couldn't pay the rent. My father then hopped a freight train to Colorado to work in a mine and sent the money home to help feed his brother and sister. He worked in Alaska canning fish, then WWII as a merchant seaman and barely escaped with his life. My father was then blacklisted and was barred from working as a merchant marine for the nest 15 years. That's the scene. Povery doesn't just happen. It's the result of a lot of history and that's what is important to realize. Also, how people cope.

Life is for lovers, and lovers are for life.

[–] spiderwort (11) 7 years ago

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