Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
This is a movie about resignation. Even the title implies that times change and the old gets swept aside. Like it or not.
And if there is truth to that, there are also too many other factors at play, even in this family tear-jerker, to quite go along innocently for the ride. The plot, and the dilemma faced by children of aging parents who need a place to live, is timeless, even if their solution (to split the parents up) is a huge contrivance that should make most children (and parents) shake their heads in disbelief. The play of problems and affections across generations is believable and interesting enough, but again, for me, a bit canned. I try to see that this is a fresh approach for 1937 and I can't quite do that either.
But it has to be said that Orson Welles, among many others, have been greatly moved by the film, perhaps for its ultimate pessimism (not for the way it was filmed, I assume). And in fact the very best scenes, almost all of them with Beulah Bondi as the wise, heart tugging grandmother (and not a cliché like many of the other characters) really have subtlety and pathos.
Director Leo McCarey had an extraordinary career, yet so diverse in style, and lacking any one absolute knockout (a "Casablanca," say), it is often relegated to second tier below the Hitchcocks and Fords and Wylers of the era. But watching his films from the Marx Brothers in "Duck Soup" to both versions of the classic tale of true love derailed, "Love Affair" and "An Affair to Remember,", throw in Cary Grant in the moving but flawed "The Awful Truth" and see Bing Crosby in the moving but flawed "The Bells of St. Mary's," and you'll see the amazing conundrum of his arc.
"Make Way for Tomorrow" is so stiff and frankly awkward in the establishment scenes for the first half hour or so, it might take some forbearance to get to the later scenes where the plot divides into two parallel worlds. It is the New York plot that works, with the astonishing acting of Bondi as the grandmother, the fresh young actress Barbara Read as the granddaughter, and the somewhat strained father figure between the two, played by veteran Thomas Mitchell. And it is the rather amazing and very moving final half hour with the two oldsters together again in Central Park, and in the hotel where they had had their honeymoon half a century earlier (in the 1880s), that the real sobbing begins. And it is relentless, the sentiment and sadness, the inevitable sadness, without complication. It's about a couple facing their extinction, one way or another.
So, take this as a mixed experience. If the movie itself were to follow its own prescription, it (the movie) would accept that its style and attitude are antiquated even for 1937, and we might want to make way for another kind of Hollywood, and another kind of sentimental movie (like "Grapes of Wrath," as one example). But if you just grab the sentiment at its most sentimental, you'll but a blubbering mess at the end. Which is pretty good.
This is a movie about resignation. Even the title implies that times change and the old gets swept aside. Like it or not.
And if there is truth to that, there are also too many other factors at play, even in this family tear-jerker, to quite go along innocently for the ride. The plot, and the dilemma faced by children of aging parents who need a place to live, is timeless, even if their solution (to split the parents up) is a huge contrivance that should make most children (and parents) shake their heads in disbelief. The play of problems and affections across generations is believable and interesting enough, but again, for me, a bit canned. I try to see that this is a fresh approach for 1937 and I can't quite do that either.
But it has to be said that Orson Welles, among many others, have been greatly moved by the film, perhaps for its ultimate pessimism (not for the way it was filmed, I assume). And in fact the very best scenes, almost all of them with Beulah Bondi as the wise, heart tugging grandmother (and not a cliché like many of the other characters) really have subtlety and pathos.
Director Leo McCarey had an extraordinary career, yet so diverse in style, and lacking any one absolute knockout (a "Casablanca," say), it is often relegated to second tier below the Hitchcocks and Fords and Wylers of the era. But watching his films from the Marx Brothers in "Duck Soup" to both versions of the classic tale of true love derailed, "Love Affair" and "An Affair to Remember,", throw in Cary Grant in the moving but flawed "The Awful Truth" and see Bing Crosby in the moving but flawed "The Bells of St. Mary's," and you'll see the amazing conundrum of his arc.
"Make Way for Tomorrow" is so stiff and frankly awkward in the establishment scenes for the first half hour or so, it might take some forbearance to get to the later scenes where the plot divides into two parallel worlds. It is the New York plot that works, with the astonishing acting of Bondi as the grandmother, the fresh young actress Barbara Read as the granddaughter, and the somewhat strained father figure between the two, played by veteran Thomas Mitchell. And it is the rather amazing and very moving final half hour with the two oldsters together again in Central Park, and in the hotel where they had had their honeymoon half a century earlier (in the 1880s), that the real sobbing begins. And it is relentless, the sentiment and sadness, the inevitable sadness, without complication. It's about a couple facing their extinction, one way or another.
So, take this as a mixed experience. If the movie itself were to follow its own prescription, it (the movie) would accept that its style and attitude are antiquated even for 1937, and we might want to make way for another kind of Hollywood, and another kind of sentimental movie (like "Grapes of Wrath," as one example). But if you just grab the sentiment at its most sentimental, you'll but a blubbering mess at the end. Which is pretty good.