Make Way For Tomorrow

1937 - Paramount Pictures
Directed By Leo McCarey


SYNOPSIS

An elderly couple (Victor Moore + Beulah Bondi) loses their home to the bank. Their children take them in but only have room for one at each place, so the couple of 50 years must be split up. The both suffer loneliness at the separation.... still madly in love.

MY THOUGHTS

A forgotten classic.

In the golden age of cinema, each major studio strove to make about 50 films a year, resulting in several hundred films a year just from them. B-movie studios and other fly-by-night companies contributed hundreds more. In a setting like that, you would have to factor that many fine films fell through the cracks and into obscurity. Make Way For Tomorrow is one of them.


It lacks a big-name cast (but filled with familiar faces) and deals with the unpopular topic of the elderly... which contribute to its obscurity.


Seniors are rarely the focus of films and even fewer films featuring them are successes. Plus it doesn't help that 'Tomorrow' is a sad film. At the height of the Depression, a sad film was the last thing anyone wanted to see anyway and the film flopped.

Thankfully, the Criterion Company has resurrected the film for DVD.
It was one of hundreds of films Paramount sold to Universal in the 1950's to be sold for television. Universal has barely touched that pile of films for DVD release and those it had released had been lacking in quality prints and bonus features (like the Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection and Preston Sturges: The Filmmaker Collection box sets.) 'Tomorrow" never even made it to VHS and finally hit DVD in 2010.
Criterion licensed this important film from Universal and provided an outstanding looking print that looks like it has aged little in 70+ years. Its as good as or better than the usual Criterion quality, which is the vanguard for the entire DVD industry.

Director Leo McCarey made his name as a comedy director ( he put Laurel and Hardy together and directed such classics as The Awful Truth, Duck Soup and Going My Way) but he turns to drama here. There is plenty of humor here though mostly subtle and never laugh-inducing.

It is a perfectly crafted film. It's never overly maudlin or sentimental... yet also never overly cynical or mean spirited. The couple's children are never pegged as bad people for not completely focusing on their parents.  They have their own lives to lead... and McCarey doesn't ever preach that this is wrong even though many of them make up bogus excuses why NOT to take in the elderly couple. The old husband and wife are also portrayed as both victims and as people who are just clearly in the way of their children's lives (like in the bridge game class.)
Like my previous review of Coal Miner's Daughter, everything is presented in a realistic and matter-of-fact way, free of director's prejudices.


Fans of classic cinema, especially ones looking for something rare, different, and subtly powerful could not find anything better than Make Way For Tomorrow.