DVD Review: 'Make Way for Tomorrow'

Article first published as DVD Review: Make Way for Tomorrow on Blogcritics.

Director: Leo McCarey
Writer: Viña Delmar, based on the novel The Years Are So Long by Josephine Lawrence and a play by Helen Leary and Noah Leary

For some reason, in our society, we are taught—if not by instruction, then by example—to discard the old. We are solely interested in the new, in the present, what is happening right now. Often, our obsessions or our problems have evaporated in a year or two, but no matter. Elderly people are relegated to nursing homes. The young are worshiped. Just try to get a bunch of kids to watch a movie from the 1940’s and see what happens (now that 80’s movies are being remade, it’s getting to the point where anything from before the mid-90’s is considered a relic). What we often neglect to remember is that one day we ourselves will be old, and then we’ll be on the outside looking in.

This is where Barkley and Lucy Cooper (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) find themselves. They are in their 70’s, and the bank has foreclosed on their house. Barkley hasn’t worked in four years, and “with everything goin’ out, and nothin’ coming in, I couldn’t keep up the payments.” They’ve gathered together their children to inform them that their home is no longer their home; they were given six months to move out, but the six months are up this Tuesday. The children, led by George (Thomas Mitchell), immediately start trying to devise a plan, but they aren’t wealthy and they don’t have much extra space in their own homes. Finally, a solution is hit upon: Lucy will stay with George, his wife Anita (Fay Bainter), and their teenage daughter Rhoda (Barbara Read); and Barkley will stay with Cora (Elisabeth Risdon) and her husband Bill (Ralph Remley) in New York City. They’ll be 300 miles apart, but it won’t be forever, right?

The transition is just as rough as you’d expect. With nothing else to keep her occupied, Lucy takes to entertaining Rhoda’s friends, driving them all away. When, in a painfully uncomfortable scene, Anita is teaching her bridge class, Lucy rocks back and forth in a distractingly creaky chair, then gets a phone call from Barkley, yelling to him as if trying to force her words across the 300 miles. Barkley isn’t faring much better in New York. Though he finds a friend in a Jewish shopkeeper named Mr. Reubens (the indispensable Maurice Moscovitch), he’s dreadfully lonely. He tries to get a job, but he’s simply too old.

Make Way for Tomorrow, one of the only American films released during the Great Depression to actually tackle the harsh realities of its time, has for decades been highly spoken of by many, but seen by few. Upon release in 1937, it attracted rave reviews, but did nothing at the box office. Director Leo McCarey, having already made Duck Soup and Ruggles of Red Gap, and soon to launch Cary Grant into superstardom with The Awful Truth, was at the peak of his powers and so had the clout to get such anti-commercial fare into production at Paramount. No one at the studio was particularly enthused with the idea of such a gritty, downbeat drama; producer Adolph Zukor repeatedly argued with McCarey for a happy ending.

Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore in 'Make Way for Tomorrow'

Indeed, the film bears little similarity plot-wise to its Old Hollywood counterparts. There are no dapper stars. Moore and Bondi, who at the time were 61 and 49 respectively, were buried under highly convincing old-age makeup. The music does not swell, and everything is not made better. It’s unusual when a major studio puts out a movie like that these days, but back then, Make Way for Tomorrow was a lone anomaly. However, for all its value, I can’t help but ponder the film’s nagging flaws. I want to be able to join the chorus hailing it as a lost masterpiece, but I can’t quite jump onboard that easily.

In its characters’ motivations and conflicts, the film is entirely realistic, and very incisive. They do not bend to the wills of any script or plot (which is to be expected of McCarey, who frequently improvised on set). But the early, stage-setting scenes are rather stiff and creaky, something the movie finds hard to shake as it moves along. And though McCarey and screenwriter Viña Delmar, working from the novel The Years Are So Long by Josephine Lawrence as well as a play by Helen and Noah Leary, make sure not to present us with any heroes or villains, I couldn’t help but be annoyed with the children and their half-baked boarding plans. Perhaps it’s just me, but I couldn’t imagine splitting my parents up, certainly not by 300 miles, no matter the financial burdens I may have to undertake. I understand that their behavior is crucial to the film, and I’m not faulting it for being unpleasant at times. For the first two-thirds, though, it occasionally veers into “old people being bulled for 90 minutes” territory.

Yet in the last 30 minutes, Make Way for Tomorrow transcends whatever faults it may have. McCarey ditches the kids, leaving Ma and Pa Cooper alone together, wandering through the city. They remember the hotel they went to on their honeymoon 50 years ago, and they find it different than it was before, but still standing. They drink together, they dance, they reaffirm their love for one another. Despite admiring the first two acts, I was not expecting to be moved on this level. There is no other word to describe the delicate duet Moore and Bondi perform but “sublime.” It is here that the movie began to remind me, in a way, of the work of the Italian neo-realists. The Coopers are merely together, and we are left to gaze upon their relationship, and the actions of those around them. So much depends on these final moments, and McCarey, Moore, and Bondi deliver effortlessly. By the final shot, as Barkley and Lucy step aside to make way for tomorrow, I was surprised to find myself crying.

The Extras

As with all Criterion releases, Make Way for Tomorrow is beautifully packaged, adorned with lovely cartoon artwork by Seth. Included on the disc are two 20-minute video overviews of McCarey’s career and the making of Make Way for Tomorrow: “Tomorrow, Yesterday, and Today,” with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich; and an interview with film critic Gary Giddins. To be honest, I enjoyed these retrospectives more than I did the actual movie. Both Bogdanovich and Giddins are extremely knowledgeable and fascinating speakers. They outline McCarey’s beginnings as a lawyer so bad he was “chased out of court and ran all the way to Hollywood,” where he paired Laurel and Hardy, and began making silent comedies. They recount Make Way for Tomorrow’s reception, Giddins recalling one reviewer who liked the film but couldn’t recommend it because it would ruin your day (after all, its audience was already suffering through the Depression). John Ford, Frank Capra, and George Bernard Shaw were all huge admirers of the movie. Bogdanovich remembers asking Orson Welles if he’d ever seen it, to which Welles responded, “Oh my God! That’s the saddest movie ever made! It would make a stone cry!”

Also included is a booklet containing three essays: “Make Way for Lucy…” by Tad Gallagher, who illustrates the effectiveness of McCarey’s technique, drawing comparions to Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story; “We Laugh, and Our Hearts Ache” by Bertrand Tavernier, a French filmmaker who recalls witnessing the film for the first time and preparing it for its much belated French debut in the 1960’s; and “With This Ending, I Thee Unwed” by the late Robin Wood, who superbly dissects the ten key episodes of the movie’s incredible final act.