NFR Project: 'Make Way for Tomorrow" (1937)

 

NFR Project: ‘Make Way for Tomorrow’

Dir: Leo McCarey

Scr: Vina Delmar

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: LeRoy Stone

Premiere: May 9, 1937

92 min.

If this film doesn’t make you cry, you have no heart.

This completely uncharacteristic film from Leo McCarey, best known for his comedies, is a serious examination of a difficult topic – the care of elders, and their places in our lives.

Aged Ma and Pa (Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore) find that hard times have caught up with them, and they can’t make their house payments any longer. Pa has tried to find work, but no one will employ him because of his age. They have five grown children – none of whom is willing or able to take the two of them in together.

The two are forcibly separated. Ma, chatty and cheerful, is seen as an embarrassment by her family. When Pa becomes ill, friends and neighbors try to step but his crabby daughter drives them away.

Finally, it is decided that Pa must go and live in California with one of the children, for his health’s sake. There is no room for Ma; she is to be sent to a retirement home. The unhappy couple meet one last time, and go out on the town for a few hours while the children worry. In contrast to the indifference and shame the children display, all the strangers they meet that evening treats them kindly. Ma sees Pa off at the train station, likely to never see him again.

The film can and should make the viewer uncomfortable. At this point in American history, old people were just being sent to retirement homes, instead of being kept in the home. This discarding of the elderly became standard procedure by mid-century. Somehow, this film got made – at a time when, in Hollywood, happy endings were mandatory.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Old Mill.