The alternating pattern of harmony, contrasted with interpersonal conflict, constitutes what the authors call the ‘emotional dialectics’ of the film. Significantly, the film’s most intense moments of emotional harmony and discord occur in front of (or through) these in-between thresholds, where softness gives way to hardness (and vice versa).
These are sites of indeterminacy, where personal transitions and economic transactions take place. The central visual elements in this film are thresholds or openings, such as windows, doorways, and stairways, which together comprise a liminal space whose crossings serve as the literal inscriptions of Kazan’s dialectical project. This essay analyzes Elia Kazan’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), an adaptation of Betty Smith’s bestselling novel of the same title (published two years earlier).
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