Tonight's motion picture selection was another new Criterion release, obtained as usual from Northridge Libe, called "Make Way For Tomorrow" (1937). Victor Moore and the great character actress Beulah Bondi star as a senior couple who have called their adult children, spread miles apart, to come over for dinner and a special announcement. The children, middle aged and with lives of their own, arrive impatient and wanting to hear whatever news their folks have to impart. The dinner can wait.
Moore (the father) tells them that the bank has foreclosed on the house. He is 70 (but looks 85 in the way that generation seemed to age faster than we do now), and can no longer find work. This is before there was Social Security, and now the parents have no money to make the house payments. They are going to have to move out within the week.
Their children discuss the matter, though they are visibly distracted because it is clear that none of them wants to take on the burden of housing their folks. They all have their excuses. No one seems to have enough room for Mom and Dad. The eldest son, who seems the most compassionate, suggests a temporary solution. Ma will come and live at his house, and perhaps the older sister could take in Dad. Sis is rather cold, and it is intimated in the opening dialogue, when the children arrive for the gathering, that three of the four (eldest son excepted) have not had much contact with their parents since they left home. This is a story about how we rush through life in search of success, moving past our upbringing (and thus past our parents who raised us) so that we can establish adult lives of our own. But in the process, we shove the older generation out of the way.
The eldest son has a conscience, so he takes Mom in. His wife, who teaches the game of Bridge to locals for extra money, tolerates her mother-in-law's presence in the home, but just barely, and here director Leo McCarey plays things straight, making no one the villain. Mom (Bondi) is a sweet old lady, but also a little overbearing and self centered, so you can feel sympathy for her daughter-in-law. Ditto for the teenaged daughter, who is embarrassed to bring her friends over any more, because grandma corrals them and talks their ears off. This results in a subplot in which the daughter begins to sneak out on dates with older men who are unknown to her parents. The situation in the house is reaching a boiling point, and Eldest Son & Bridge Teaching Wife begin to research Old Folks Homes for grandma.
Meanwhile, director McCarey generates some sympathy for her, by showing that she is aware of being a burden, and that all she really wants is to be with her husband again.
Beulah Bondi, who you have seen in a lot of movies, is a wonderful actress and she carries this movie with her complex portrayal of an old woman set in her ways but who is willing to sacrifice her wishes more than the younger people realize. She will move aside for them, if that is what they want. The irony is that they are all hypocrites, telling Ma that they'd love to help, but.....here's the brochure for the Rest Home.
The tandem story thread with Dad is similar. He lives with his daughter and her husband who don't want him there, and he is cantankerous too. McCarey shows that it is the older people in town who are kind to him. They are of the same generation. But as I mentioned, the script is so well written and even handed, that no cliches are used to generate false sympathies or alliances with particular characters.
What is made explicit, though, is that the children are copping out on their parents, who are now separated by 300 miles and living apart - for the first time in fifty years - as elderly people who cannot do much to fend for themselves anymore. Their kids could do more to keep them together, but they don't want to. That's the moral of the story, and it's a sad one.
"Make Way For Tomorrow" isn't a tearjerker per se because of the way McCarey refuses to place blame and thus overemotionalize the situation. Rather it is a poignant tale, because the parents accept their fate with dignity. Parts of this movie affected me greatly, because I had a complex relationship with my own folks well into my adulthood (as have many of us), and yet in the long run, after everything we had been through, I came to love them overwhelmingly and they became my best friends. I would up caring for both Mom and Dad before they passed away and then ended up becoming a caregiver for another lady (Pearl) as you probably know. So I have a lot of feelings and opinions about treating older people with love and respect. It's a prime example of the Golden Rule, because one day we will be the older ones, and we will hope that those younger than us will treat us as they will one day hope to be treated when they, in turn, become old.
Fortunately, the story never becomes maudlin because director McCarey chooses to make heroes of Moore and Bondi. They may be old, but they still have years of built-in knowledge and strength, or at least resolve. And they have fifty years of love under their belts.
I don't want to give away any spoilers from the final act, but I will tell you that they do reunite, because you can see that coming anyway. And when they do, they have a truly Grand Finale.
Except at the end, but even there you are left with a slight ray of hope. ////
"Make Way For Tomorrow" has the visual appearance, in it's costuming and art direction, of a truly "old fashioned" movie that might be a stereotype for folks who are not accustomed to films about Depression-era America. The age-advancing makeup on Moore and Bondi, and the way they create Ma and Pa as nearly senile but still spunky seniors are depictions from a bygone cinematic age and they look like characters from a stage play, as does the initial setting of the family home. Much of the movie looks antiquated, and Bondi's character is the centerpiece of this feeling. She looks like she came from Victorian times, and history is passing her by.
I was initially going to give the film either one and a half thumbs up or two regular thumbs, because of the lack of emotional wallop, which a viewer conditioned to such dramatic provocations would expect from a movie like this. There are none here, but after I thought about it, I realized that I was affected even more by not having my emotions manipulated. The story and performances were straightforward and felt like real life, the way people really are.
Therefore, Two Huge Thumbs Up for a deeply affecting tragicomic story about growing old, but with resolve. /////
I had another nice hike at Santa Susana for the second day in a row. The water was falling on the Waterfall Trail as you may have seen in my FB pic.
Tomorrow I will see you in church, and the singing will be good because you are there. :)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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