RE-WATCH MARATHONMake Way For Tomorrow (1937) Hotel Manager: How many children have you?
Pa: Five of them.
Hotel Manager: Really! I'll bet they've brought you a lot of pleasure!
Pa: I bet you haven't any children.
Make Way For Tomorrow
What a dear, sweet, beautiful movie. I heard about this when I learned it helped inspire Tokyo Story, but I got a lot more out of this 1937 Faberge Egg of a film directed by Leo McCarey. The story and the style reminded me more of Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece Ikiru. The feeling of approaching death hangs overhead like a darkening cloud, and there's a dramatic tonal change in the final 45 minutes.
The film plays best in the first half, with McCarey pulling some uncomfortable laughs out of the awkward intrusion of the elder parents. ("How fancy can a sandwich be?") A wonderful bit involving a squeaky rocking chair will remind you that McCarey also made Duck Soup, a thought you wouldn't expect to have from this material. Sometimes it gets kinda schmaltzy - the Mom is passive aggressive about the kids going out and leaving her alone - but all the points of view are understandable and sympathetic. Much more insightful than you expect to find in a product of 1930s Hollywood.
The lengthy back section is devoted to one special day the old couple spend together. I was bracing for a heart attack finale or for something similarly tragic, but this avoids cheap tricks and goes for a bittersweet conclusion that found its way to my heart without aiming directly for it. As for the day, well here it gets a little drawn out. At times it does capture the feeling of spending the day with grandparents a little too well. Beulah Bondi as Lucy shows a completely different side of herself as opposed to when she's in the hands of her children. It makes this day feel even more intimate for the viewer. Barkley is played by the wonderful Victor Moore (Swing Time) and he's much more consistently cranky, though his overriding trait is the desire for good conversation with decent people. They're a very adorable couple, but I really missed the friction with the kids. Still, this is a movie I want to grow old with.
RATING: * * * 1/2
REASON FOR RE-WATCH: Mrs. 1SO hadn't seen this and I had to think the experience could only be heightened by sharing it with her.
I don't think you will ever change my opinion that this is the Best Screenplay of 1937. It's that saying about how no film ever tries to be bad. Every one of them is hoping for the best. Even a cash register like Transformers 4 can only improve its chances by having a great script. The trouble is great scripts are so rare, and if you want to know why than try to write one. However, for every thousand monkeys sitting their thousand typewriters, a work of beauty will happen.
Make Way is based on a novel by Josephine Lawrence and a play by Helen and Nolan Leary. The screenplay by Viña Delmar (The Awful Truth) aims to humanize the parents and their children. There are bad decisions and bad people but this isn't a film with villains. I adore the parents (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) though they bring some of this misfortune on themselves. I understand the reactions of the children, suddenly placed into making choices that will hurt either the ones who raised them or the ones they are trying to raise.
The movie is funny, though not in the broad way you might associate with Leo McCarey, and it's sad, but it never milks tears like the situation would suggest. The balance of performances, the unusual structure, the almost stage-like direction (with very selective changes to the frame, like the intrusion of and absence caused by a rocking chair), they don't feel like anything else from this time in American filmmaking. I don't know when Make Way For Tomorrow was officially re-evaluated and discovered, when Criterion decided to add it to their collection, but I am so grateful that it happened. The movie seems ahead of its time in terms of sophistication. (You might think of that final section as Linklater's Before movies with Jesse and Celine in their 70s.) Though the film's drama would offer some workable solutions in the modern day, the characters are so much stronger in their impact than you're used to seeing, no matter what the point in time.
RATING: * * * *, rising up to my
Top 3 of 1937I should add that it took some time for Mrs. 1SO to be won over by the film. She wasn't sure if many of the earlier scenes were going for comedy or drama. (I was already loving it more than my first viewing.) However, that final section worked on her like a magic spell.