Review - Make Way for Tomorrow

 May 20, 2022
 
Make Way for Tomorrow – U.S., 1937
 

There are stories that transcend time, that tell such universal truths that, despite clear indicators that they are from a specific time and place, they have a resonance that a more recent film replete with the latest technological advances and starring members of the current A-list simply may not. Sometimes they are mirrors providing a physical image to things that many of us often would prefer not to have running around in our heads, harsh truths about the kind of people we either are or are susceptible to becoming in just the right (or wrong in this case) circumstance. Ang Lee touched on this in his debut film, Pushing Hands, Ira Sachs explored a variation of it in Love Is Strange, Barry Levinson in Avalon, Yasujiro Ozu in Tokyo Story, Edward Yang in Yi Yi. And one such truth is this: We can be quite awful to the people who raised us.
 
Leo McCarey begins his 1937 masterpiece, Make Way for Tomorrow. with an acknowledgement of that sad fact through a scroll that ends with an impassioned plea to heed those immortal words Honor thy mother and father, and frankly speaking, this is the only part of the movie I wish I could apply editor’s scissors to. After all, who needs to be “told” when what follows “shows” in such devastating detail?
 
We then drop in on a family gathering of sorts, and it is soon clear that these do not occur all that often. After some pleasant (and a few unpleasant) pleasantries, the patriarch of the family, Barkley Cooper (Victor Moore) delivers quite a shock: He and his wife, Lucy (Beulah Bondi), both in their seventies, are only a few days away from homelessness, and there’s nothing to be done about it.  Now, in the fairy tale version of this story, the Coopers’ adult children all band together and find an idyllic spot for them to spend their remaining years together. Here, that notion is fractured almost immediately.
 
There are concerns about space, distance, timing, financing, and – sadly, perhaps most obstructionist of all – family. Some of these concerns indeed have merit, for few people, especially those living in the big city, buy a bigger (and more expensive) house on the off-chance that their parents need a place to stay later. Soon, the children reach a decision – to split the couple up. Mr. Cooper will stay with the eldest daughter, Cora (Elisabeth Risdon), and Mrs. Copper will live with the eldest son, George (Thomas Mitchell), in his big apartment, currently co-occupied by George, his wife, Anita (Fay Bainter), and their teenage daughter, Rhoda (Barbara Read). Temporarily, their children assure them, and Mrs. Cooper is willing to believe these optimistic sentiments. Mr. Cooper, much less so. Why would it work, he reasons, when it hasn’t worked for anyone else?
 
Thus, two people who have spent the previous fifty years together are separated in the vein hope that their children, into whose hands they’ve just placed their well-being, will do right by them. It’s telling then that Robert Cooper (Ray Meyer), the youngest son, who bursts into a jazzy homage to his mother upon entering the Cooper’s home, and their younger daughter, Nellie (Minna Gombell), practically disappear from the film.
 
The film adopts an episodic formula that works impressively. McCarey first shows us Mrs. Cooper’s experience, which sees George’s wife and daughter adopt that ever-positive message it’s only three months – only for three months to seem much more permanent with each passing day. Traditions are disrupted, private space is lost, and friends stop calling on Rhoda. In one scene, Mrs. Cooper (the wife) tries to explain to Mrs. Cooper (the mother) that she too is Mrs. Cooper, and that only one Mrs. Cooper should be running the house and taking care of Mr. Cooper (the son and husband). It doesn’t solve anything. In another, Mrs. Cooper (the wife) is holding a bridge class in her home, and the evening is going splendidly until the Cooper’s maid (Louise Beavers) enters carrying the elder Mrs. Cooper’s rocking chair. The “invasion” practically unnerves Anita. The scene culminates with an emotional phone call between the elder Coopers, one which occurs in full-view of the bridge class and its instructor. The room is dead silent, stunned out of their annoyance by the sheer heartbreak of the situation, and yet not a single person offers a word of comfort. In truth, what can they say? Could anything make the situation better?
 
McCarey then transports us a few states over to update us on Mr. Cooper’s status before finishing the film by bringing these two characters back together, but not for the reasons you’d hope. The finale is pure cinematic magic. I was struck as I watched this part of the film by two sets of characters. There were the Cooper children and their families, of course, and then there were the people Mr. Cooper encountered in his new home and those he and his wife meet during their reunion in the big city. In fairness to the former group, most of them try. It’s just that human nature is not on their side. You can have all of the best of intentions only to see those sentiments dwarfed and ultimately defeated by instinctive tendencies toward self-preservation. Get things back to normal. Preserve your space, your routine, your social network. I recently read an essay by a college student whose family experienced bouts of homelessness. In one passage, he recounts having to continually move from home to home because of his relatives’ “one-night only” policy. My immediate reaction was that I would never do that, and yet years ago, when my half-sister called out of the blue and asked if she and her boyfriend could stay with us while they explored a possible move to California, I blinked, and the visit never came to pass. So, I get the children. They’re not horrible people; they’re just been put in a horrible situation, and like so many of us, they are unable to rise to the occasion.
 
But then there are the people the Cooper’s meet along the way: the owner of a corner store who engages with Mr. Cooper in long, meaningful chats whenever he frequents his shop, the manager of the hotel who treats them like royalty when he learns that they spent their honeymoon in his hotel fifty years earlier, the band leader who spies them in the crowd and changes melodies to give them more time to dance the waltz. There’s even a car salesman who becomes so affected by them that he practically becomes their chauffer for the evening. In these and many other characters, we see the humanity and goodness that stress and self-protective tendencies have severely weakened in the Connor children and their families.
 
And then there’s the ending, which is one of the most poignant in cinematic history.
 
We are guided along this journey by two extremely capable lead actors and a host of equally impressive supporting actors. We sense the down-home nature of the Moore’s and Bondi’s independently minded-characters. These are people who would shed far fewer tears over the loss of a house than they would the loss of time with each other. They seem less out of place than out of time. Their children turn to other people for advice, and while they may get along with their grandchildren’s generation in small doses, there’s a sense that there will always be a gap between them, as if time, as if is prone to do, has made their experiences and views, irrelevant. Make Way for Tomorrow shows the error in this way of thinking. In the Cooper’s, we see two people we should emulate instead of looking past. We should want what they have and seek them out for advice of how to achieve it. Of course, that conflicts with the understandable focus on the present and the belief that previous generations couldn’t possible comprehend today’s. Step aside, we seem to say. Make way for tomorrow. We never suspect that one day they’ll be saying that about us or that they’ll be as wrong as we were. (on DVD and Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection)
 
5 stars