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"For childhood." New York City in the onset of the century is a cramped tenement, the scrawny tree persisting through cement is the feminine metaphor embodied by the blossoming heroine (Peggy Ann Garner). On her knees scrubbing staircases, her mother (Dorothy McGuire) is petrified by concern and frugality; staggering home full of beer and anxious Irish cheer, her father (James Dunn) is "what you might call an artist." Add the watchful little brother (Ted Donaldson) and the banished aunt (Joan Blondell), and the frayed family album is complete. (And the influence on Ray's Pather Panchali evident.) The tear in the rug and the dime in the can, The Anatomy of Melancholy at the library and "Annie Laurie" on the piano. "Tell the truth and write the lies," the teacher advises budding storytellers, so it goes for Elia Kazan, out of Broadway and into the plush Fox lot. (The rooftop sanctuary of On the Waterfront is already in sight, only it's a rear-projection of hazy skies.) The vision of urban grime is creamy, the camera leans on fastidious sets and the score is a calliope cascade, yet the avid newcomer keeps searching for dashes of emotional veracity. When broken-down Papa bids a final farewell to his daughter and slips into the night, the calm horror of a dreamer alone with failure suffuses the screen. And when mother and daughter reach tacit expiation in the middle of a contorted childbirth sequence, Kazan discovers the link between his yen for expressionistic physicality and the protagonist's pliant consciousness. Meet Me in St. Louis and I Remember Mama, To Kill a Mockingbird and Fanny and Alexander. Tellingly, the atmosphere of gentility is not picked up again until The Last Tycoon. With Lloyd Nolan, James Gleason, Ruth Nelson, and John Alexander. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |