Make Way for Movies for Grown-Ups
This reality was ingeniously illustrated by the creators of TV’s Fraiser – whose titular character reluctantly takes in his frail, aging father – using the visual shorthand of the father’s shabby reclining arm chair forever stuck like a stubborn bunion in the middle of Fraiser’s expensively furnished penthouse.
An old person’s favorite (and incongruous) chair also plays a supporting role in one of the most searing scenes in Leo McCarey’s neglected masterpiece, Make Way for Tomorrow:
If one believes that true cinema artistry is measured primarily by recognition and reward, then Leo McCarey more than earned his place in the directorial pantheon with the popular Cary Grant/Irene Dunne divorce comedy The Awful Truth.
Yet when accepting his Best Director Oscar for the film, McCarey offered a mild rebuke to the majority opinion: “Thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture.”
McCarey was speaking of Make Way for Tomorrow…
If you’re like me, “watching a movie about two old people” is not at the top of your to-do list. Oh sure, you’ll make an exception for Grumpy Old Men if it’s Thanksgiving weekend and there’s nothing else on.
Well, Make Way for Tomorrow ain’t that, even though the movie’s deceptively cheery title makes it sound like a “madcap” 1930s musical comedy with lots of tap dancing and jazz hands. After you see it, however, that title doubles back to bite you – the last wound of a wounding film.
Make Way for Tomorrow opens with the words “Honor they father and mother” written across the sky as if by the hand of God. However, that bizarre touch seems to belong to an altogether different film, or more like the studio’s doing than the director’s. (They tried without success to get McCarey to re-shoot a happier ending.)
Because as it happens, the Moving Finger, having writ’, moves on, leaving the movie’s characters dropped into what seems like a world created by an uncaring deity.
Make Way for Tomorrow tells the story of an elderly couple who lose their home and look to their adult children to care for them. These children are, to put it mildly, less than enthusiastic about the prospect.
However, that “TV Guide” synopsis doesn’t begin to capture the essence of this ruthlessly candid film, which I expect some viewers will find harder to watch than Hostel.
“McCarey doesn’t separate his characters into heroes and villains by making the ‘old folks’ kindly innocents victimized by unthinking relatives. Dealing with the parents isn’t always easy. Old Bark knows he’s not welcome in Cora’s house and becomes uncooperative. Lucy disrupts Alice’s bridge lessons, puts a strain on the duties of the maid (Louise Beavers) and contributes unintentionally to problems with daughter Rhoda. The problem is everyone’s fault and no one’s; there just seems no place for Bark and Lucy to be together. Even the understanding George and Alice are eventually compelled to take steps to remove mother from the house.”
Make Way for Tomorrow refuses us the “cheap grace” we’d get watching stock characters get their Dickensian (or Capraesque) due. No, nobody in this movie is eager to “do their duty,” which in this instance comes without the usual melodramatic consolation prizes of jewels, gowns, or pastel views of Capri.
That said, the old couple are a burden: they’re often annoyingly timid and passive aggressive and boring, given to rehearsing their endless list of aches and pains; even in the movies, to say nothing of real life, homes quite simply have limited space; one’s adult sons and daughters have, quite naturally, already carefully arranged their lives in a particular way, and are blessed with limited stores of patience, money, flexibility, energy, and time.
There is no final redemption. In the last reel, viewers are permitted only a few tantalizing minutes of relief, and even those are bittersweet. The ending of the film casts the helpless protagonists off into a deep, lonely, loveless void, into which, we’re obliged to conclude, we will one day follow them.
Documentarian Errol Morris, who placed Make Way for Tomorrow at the top of his list of most important films, noted:
“[It's] the most depressing movie ever made, providing reassurance that everything will definitely end badly.”
He was echoing Orson Welles’ famous comment about it:
“My God! I watched it four times and cried my eyes out every time! That movie would make a stone cry!”
But who are we really crying for? The old couple? Or ourselves, terrified of enduring a similar fate — be it that of being a burden, or having to shoulder one?
Excellently done. And good luck to you.
My 89 year old father just spent 2 weeks with us–I know it won’t work out happily for us long term, on either side.
Conversely I just spoke with my 27 year old daughter-in-law on the telephone who presumed that I would take her to the airport, the little snip.
Ah well, an ice floe for me.
Kathy, you have to do as well as you can, and better than that, and then forgive yourself when you fail. Just so you only fail part of the time.
And you must do this job. Otherwise you will be a failure the rest of your life.
Good grief.
That is a movie that I will make it a point to never see.
I remember watching “Looking for Mr.Goodbar” at the movies and then thinking about killing myself for months afterwords. What is the matter with people who would make that kind of movie or who would watch it on purpose?
If you want to watch black and white movies from the 1930s watch Jimmy Cagny gangster films, screwball comedies, King Kong, white piano movies or “Gabriel Over the White House”. Watching movies that make you feel wretched is sick and stupid.
Unless you are extremely lucky, your life will have plenty of genuine sadness. There is absolutely no reason to sign up for some artificial sadness too.
I watched the clip. If that was supposed to turn on the spigot, it just didn’t do the trick. I’d want to ditch the old bat too. Movies like that are transparent in their contrivance. As you said, she is annoying, and as someone who wants to at least try to make a connection/like a character, that was the equivalent of listening to fingernails being scraped across a chalkboard. Never heard of it, and now I know why.
I liked the scene above – because that’s the way it often is for the very elderly. I was fortunate, as a child, to have two elderly couples living nextdoor on either side of my house. They were like extra sets of grandparents as neither had had any children. They spoiled me but most of all – they taught me a real respect and love for those “age challenged” adults.
I never had to deal with infirm, elderly parents. My parents each died suddenly from one swift and massive heart attack. My mother had every Christmas present wrapped, labeled and waiting in her spare bedroom. Her Christmas Eve delicacies were waiting in the ‘frig – for my annual party. My dad was preparing to go deep sea fishing. Both – tho’ older – were vibrant to the end. I’d like to think had they needed a place to stay – my home would’ve been open. But, I’ll never have the chance to find out.
I love old films (I believe 1939 produced more great art than any year since the Renaissance), but will have to pass this one by. Too close to home. I cared for my infirm father for 13 years, and it took a toll on me that I don’t care to revisit. He tried not to be a burden and I tried not to let him know he was one, but we ended up resenting one another terribly.
No, this is one classic film which will have to remain an unknown quantity in my house.
CSLewis and a friend, during world war 1, to care for and support each others’ family, should harm come to either of them. His friend died. CSLewis took in the friend’s mother, and lived with her until her death. She was a markedly unpleasant woman, according to his acquaintances.
Screwtape Letters talks about a young man dealing with a pettish mother. You might like it. You will probably recognize certain scenes of frustration. Well, is a devil advising another devil on how to lead the young man astray. so there’s some breathing room and humor.
A biography or letters might give you, as well, sustenance for your soul.
This is an excellent article.I really like that “the-killers-calls-are-coming-from-inside-the-hous line!
My own mom is going on 87 and suffering from congestive heart failure. However she has six kids and so is the object of a kind of relay in which each one of us take turns caring for her.
Yes it’s all destined to end rather badly. My mom was irrepresable, a busy-body gadfly involved in all sorts of volunteer activities and community organisations.
But now ‘success’ means simply being able to take a shower on her own.
Let me suggest two additional movies that are B/W.
First “The Strawberry Blonde” with James Cagney, Olivia Dehavland, and, Before Tim Curry there was the original likeable scoundrel, Jack Carson. A very light and enjoyable movie about Life, Love, Betrayal, and Corruption.
Then there is “The Man Who Never Was” featuring Clifton Webb (not being the Prig Mr. Belvedere) A somewhat heavier classic regarding Espionage and Loss of innocense.
Sounds like it was made to be a ‘Double Feature’ with Kurosawa’s IKIRU.
Which gets my vote for best Japanese film. Also one of the All Time Top 100.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiru
And yes it’s a shocking moment when you realize that ‘Damn-It! I grew up!’.
And childish things no longer work their magic.
I’ve loved old B&W movies since I was a little kid (when we only had 3 TV channels). I’d never seen or heard of Make Way for Tomorrow. But I lived it the last fifteen years. Only I found a nearby place (Good Samaritan Village has buildings all over the country, btw) where the staff were as loving and caring a person could hope for. (Hint: check out the kitchen and all the other “usual” things — but when you tour the place, look to see how the staff treat the residents. Do they make eye contact, or look over their heads? Do they interact, or treat them like pieces of furniture to be rearranged at set intervals?). When each of my parents was hospitalized, the staff members would, *on* *their* *days* *off* visit them in the hospital that was the opposite end of town from the Village. You honestly can’t pay enough for that kind of loving devotion.
My mother died the 3rd of July, 2003 (age 89). My father died last Christmas Eve (age 96, after just having played Santa Claus in a Village production). I’d give anything to sit and listen to them talk about whatever they wanted to.
My husband’s parents are in their mid-80′s, and just as robust and self-sufficient as my parents had been before my mother’s Parkinson’s took a turn for the worst. I can see a day coming when, they, too, will be more our responsibility than at present. I’ll roll with it as another stage in an ongoing relationship that I treasure.
I sound like Pollyanna, I know – but, everyday, find something to *enjoy* about them. My parents (my father, in particular) were like having access to my own, personal time machine. His reminiscences are deep background in almost every history mystery I will ever publish — and I am a better person, and a way better writer, because of them.
I never identified with movie/TV teenagers even when I was a teenager! I especially hated ‘The Breakfast Club’. I could not stomach those obnoxious brats when I was exactly that age. I can’t imagine what my reaction would be if I watched it again now, at age 43!
Ditto!
I love “Make Way for Tomorrow”. It broke my heart over and over, yet I rate it as one of my all time favorite movies. FYI, I’m a 57-year-old wife/mom very close to my parents. I saw this movie a few weeks before my 80-year-old father died.
Another classic from this same era is “Dodsworth”. Powerful film.
Three Words:
The Browning Version
Hmmm. I nursed my father hand and foot for the lat four years of his life.
I wouln’t have traded it for anything — but it aged me ten years.
Hey, there’s Lovee Howell in the melodrama with Susan Hayward!
Anyway, I’m another lover of old movies who hadn’t heard of “Make Way for Tomorrow.” I’d like to see the whole thing sometime.
One thing I like about many old movies is that they didn’t show “everything.” I might be the world’s last-living prude, but still I don’t believe that its necessary or edifying to be graphic with sex and violence. Many of the movie-makers of old knew that it was enough to suggest. Many great movies were made during the days of censorship. “Gone With the Wind” certainly gets its messages across effectively to adults without being graphic.
Proponents of recent-day Hollywood argue that movies are better now because they can show it all for the sake of realism, or whatever–no more silly priggish hang-ups as in the past. In response I used to think, well, then if they want to be so “realistic,” why don’t they show the actors performing certain excretory functions. Well, sure enough, in some British melodrama of a few years ago with Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, Ms. Blanchett was actually shown pretty graphically using the bathroom. I don’t know if there were many earlier cases of such, um, scenery in movies, but whenever the first case was, it was not one of the Great Milestones of Film.
Thanks, everyone.
“Dodsworth” will be part of this series.
Had forgotten The Browning Version but will add to that list.
hey buddy, I wish you a Merry Christmas as of now!!!
There is plenty of drek to wade through in black and white. Not as much I’ll give you that but enough to keep you busy. There is just more jestum now because there are more movies now. Hollywood has been churning out stale tapioca for decades.
There is nothing new really. Just retreads of old tired stories with new updated scenery. The violence is in color, more on the screen (I’ll grant you, it was just implied before), sex is portrayed instead of implied but for the most part the acting, writing and directing is just as bad as ever.
And you’re right I don’t like movies much. I especially don’t like “adult” movies much. Movies where everyone is miserable, depressed and immoral. Where they whine all movie about some consequence of some action they shouldn’t have taken and in the end they all die or someone dies or wishes they were dead (usually me).
If I wanted to see “real” life depicted on the screen, I’d volunteer for social services, go to the mall or volunteer at a mission. I go to the movies to be entertained and human misery, angst, depression and sexual shenanigans do not entertain me.
But to each his own.
Loved this article Kathy! I am a real fan of black and white movies which my mother watched everyday before she passed and really enjoyed too. I think it reminded her of her time with Dad during that era! Unlike the movies the kids see today with bad actors who are acclaimed and stories with horrible morals, the black and white pictures are really exceptional with actors who knew how to act and a moral to the story!