The Learning Tree
(The Learning Tree)

In 1969, the photographer Gordon Parks made his debut feature in Hollywood. The Learning Tree, based on his own novel about an African-American teenager in Kansas in the 1920s, is a magnificent elegiac film that draws on parallel editing to recount the destiny of two boys: one, soft-hearted, who tries to advance in life by relying on trust; the other, rebellious, who only knows mistrust, vents his anger and does time in prison. The wide screen, the iridescent colours, the relationship between sharp focus and out-of-focus are all sings that a great photographer is behind the camera. But more than that, it is the novelistic dimension of this fresco that is impressive and which creates a great film on the history of an America where a Black, whatever his age, was always called « boy ». Stéphane Delorme