Make Way for Tomorrow

Rating

Director

Leo McCarey

Screenplay

Vina Delmar, Helen Leary, Nolan Leary (Novel: Josephine Lawrence)

Length

1h 31m

Starring

Beulah Bondi, Victor Moore, Fay Bainter, Thomas Mitchell, Porter Hall, Barbara Read, Maurice Moscovitch, Minna Gombell, Ray Mayer, Ralph Remley, Louise Beavers, Louis Jean Heydt, Gene Morgan

MPAA Rating

Passed (National Board of Review)

Review

Cinema is not created in a vacuum. It is a byproduct of the social and economic climates in which it’s created. While some films can be utterly tone deaf to those environments, Make Way for Tomorrow is a poignant reflection of them, a riveting, heart-wrenching film made in the heart of the Great Depression.

Director Leo McCarey, who released his Oscar-inning film The Awful Truth the same year quipped that the Academy gave him the Oscar for the wrong film. It’s easy to see why he felt that way. This film centers around an elderly couple forced to move in with their children after the bank forecloses on their longtime home. As their kids fight over who will have to take them in, the physical and economic realities of the period result in the pair living in separate households where they constantly feel that they are treated as burdens by the children they had helped raise.

Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi play the couple with pain and sorrow etched in their faces. Their love for one another is challenged not just by distance, but by family who see little value in their presence in their lives, whether it’s assisting in raising their children or getting in the way when they try to go about their interrupted daily lives. Two of the most heartbreaking scenes come half way through the film and at its conclusion. The first revolves around a conversation the pair have over the telephone while their “inconvenienced” families listen in. The other is an in-person meeting in the closing act where the share one last day together before returning to their miserable lives separated from one another.

Hailed by Orson Welles and Roger Ebert as one of the unsung films of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Make Way for Tomorrow was also revered by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu who made his film Tokyo Story under the influence of McCarey’s. It’s also something of a right of passage for cineastes who sometimes find their first exposure at the urging of fellow cinephiles. The film is a must-see for anyone who considers themselves a fan of the motion pictures.

As a Great Depression Era film, Make Way for Tomorrow explores the socio-economic climes of the period when Social Security didn’t exist and seniors around the United States faced similar situations where their meager pensions and savings weren’t enough to protect them from predatory banks who were unforgiving when collecting their debt. The film paints a vivid portrait of why the Social Security Act was necessary in the wake of its 1935 passage. It would be another 3 years before the first benefit checks would be disbursed in 1940. For many who have never lived in a time when Social Security didn’t exist, this film acts as an exemplary time capsule of the whys and wherefores of its passage.

Make Way for Tomorrow might well be one of the most sorrow-filled films in cinema history and it is a credit to McCarey’s bravery and tenacity that the ending wasn’t covered in glossy wrapping paper and a happy-ending bow. Instead, it’s a stark film that accurately reflected a period of American history some would prefer be forgotten, but which should never be. Not only is a great, well made film with unparalleled performances from Moore and Bondi, but it’s a significant and imperative part of our collective history, a film that must be seen even if it leaves one gutted by its conclusion.

Review Written

August 23, 2021