Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937, USA)

Notable for its humanistic portrayal of old age and intergenerational relations, Make Way for Tomorrow is a sensitive drama from director Leo McCarey. Released in 1937, at the height of discussions around the New Deal and FDR's federal legislation around Social Security, the film tells the story of Bark and Lucy, an older couple who are forced to separate and move in with their children when they lose their home to foreclosure. From the beginning, the children are largely unsympathetic and unwelcome to the parents, whose presence in their life is seen as intrusive and - in a particular scene during a bridge club meeting - embarrassing.

At the height of his career, Leo McCarey was as big a name as Frank Capra. McCarey effectively launched the career of Cary Grant with It Happened One Night, and made perhaps the most essential Marx Brothers film with Duck Soup. Staunchly Irish Catholic, McCarey championed conservative causes later in his life, even in films such as My Son John. In that regard, it is perhaps surprising that he viewed the plight of the elderly in America with such sensitivity. Yet the film is not overtly political, and this political aspect only forms the undercurrent.

Despite playing characters considerably older than themselves at the time of shooting, Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi are very convincing as the older couple, bringing a great deal of warmth to the role. Orson Welles famously said of Make Way for Tomorrow that the film "could make a stone cry," and it is easy to see why. The film's fanciful finale, in which the older couple revisits their old haunts in New York City before (permanently) departing, is a truly moving moment. Make Way for Tomorrow is one of the most essential films of the 1930s, and served also as an inspiration for Ozu's Tokyo Story.

8/10