Make Way for Tomorrow Blu-ray Review
This is probably the least sentimental melodrama featuring old people dealing with the ravages of time that has ever been made. The screenplay by Vina Delmar is rather harsh and unforgiving with both Lucy and Bark, but no one in the family, not parents nor their children, emerges blameless. Lucy’s intrusion into Anita’s bridge classes is almost cruel in its directness and lack of tact (Lucy rather absurdly reveals the cards in various competing hands; she blithely rocks away while her creaking chair distracts everyone, and yet a moving scene where a call from her beloved Bark must be taken in the same room where bridge is being played, the adults shamefacedly listening while Lucy speaks half truths about her life there, continues to haunt throughout the remainder of the movie.) Just as unsettling is the icy treatment Cora gives her father who’s suffering with a cold, trundling him into the bedroom only when the doctor arrives so she can hide her cruel treatment of him. Later when dear elderly merchant Max Rubens (Maurice Moscovitch) brings over some soup, she tries to mask her shameful treatment with outrage at his effrontery, but Max easily and rightly puts her in her place. The unpleasantness and barely masked resentment is forgotten in the film’s last half hour, an idyllic reunion of the couple (and the best directed sequence in the picture) for a sort of “condemned man’s last meal” (he’s being shipped off to California; she’s going to an old age home for women) as they return to the site of their honeymoon and are given a royal reception by strangers, the antithesis of their treatment during the film’s preceding hour by their own children. It certainly helps to make the film’s final agonizing moments more endurable.
Beulah Bondi gives the film’s most astonishing performance. Playing a character clearly twenty or thirty years her senior, she’s completely and utterly believable as an old woman and heartrending in every scene as the loving mother who simply can’t seem to do anything right. Victor Moore, certainly better known as a comic presence in scores of movies before this one, plays against type here and offers a lovely, affectionate glimpse of resigned old age. Future Oscar-winners Thomas Mitchell and Fay Bainter play off one another’s guilt and guile beautifully while Maurice Moscovitch steals all of his scenes as the amiable storekeeper who can offer friendship and simple advice without expecting anything in return. Louise Beavers as the maid Mamie also figures wonderfully in a couple of quite unforgettable scenes.
Gary Giddins Interview (20:09, HD): the film critic speaks on the film’s achievements, its handling of the societal move away from children’s assuming responsibility for their aging parents, and its place in the film oeuvre of Leo McCarey. He also covers some of the same ground as Bogdanovich in discussing McCarey’s place in the industry during his own era and today.
Thirty-Page Booklet: contains complete cast and crew lists, a selection of stills from the film, and three fascinating essays: critic Tag Gallagher’s analysis of the movie in depth, director Bernard Tavernier’s celebration of the movie and his memorable first and subsequent encounters with it, and excerpts from critic Robin Wood’s examination of the movie in his book Sexual Politics & Narrative Film.
Timeline: can be pulled up from the menu or by pushing the red button on the remote. It shows you your progress on the disc and the title of the chapter you’re now in. Additionally, two other buttons on the remote can place or remove bookmarks if you decide to stop viewing before reaching the end of the film or want to mark specific places for later reference.
When Leo McCarey stepped up to the podium to accept the 1937 Oscar for Best Director for the now classic screwball comedy The Awful Truth, he thanked the Academy but added, “You gave it to me for the wrong picture.” Yes, the movie that the legendary director felt he should have been honored for remained for his entire life his favorite film: Make Way for Tomorrow. This 1937 steely melodrama doesn’t have the zest of his Oscar-winning film of that same year, but its comedy and drama are carefully wrought and quite memorable in their own right. Was McCarey right or was the Academy? Generations of movie lovers have argued about it for years, but I think the Oscars got it right for a change. That doesn’t negate, however, the very real accomplishment present in Make Way for Tomorrow. This new Blu-ray package updates Criterion’s original 2010 release of the movie on DVD.
Studio: Criterion
Distributed By: N/A
Video Resolution and Encode: 1080P/AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audio: English PCM 1.0 (Mono)
Subtitles: English SDH
Rating: Not Rated
Run Time: 1 Hr. 32 Min.
Package Includes: Blu-ray
keep caseDisc Type: BD50 (dual layer)
Region: A
Release Date: 05/12/2015
MSRP: $39.95
The Production Rating: 4/5
This is probably the least sentimental melodrama featuring old people dealing with the ravages of time that has ever been made. The screenplay by Vina Delmar is rather harsh and unforgiving with both Lucy and Bark, but no one in the family, not parents nor their children, emerges blameless. Lucy’s intrusion into Anita’s bridge classes is almost cruel in its directness and lack of tact (Lucy rather absurdly reveals the cards in various competing hands; she blithely rocks away while her creaking chair distracts everyone, and yet a moving scene where a call from her beloved Bark must be taken in the same room where bridge is being played, the adults shamefacedly listening while Lucy speaks half truths about her life there, continues to haunt throughout the remainder of the movie.) Just as unsettling is the icy treatment Cora gives her father who’s suffering with a cold, trundling him into the bedroom only when the doctor arrives so she can hide her cruel treatment of him. Later when dear elderly merchant Max Rubens (Maurice Moscovitch) brings over some soup, she tries to mask her shameful treatment with outrage at his effrontery, but Max easily and rightly puts her in her place. The unpleasantness and barely masked resentment is forgotten in the film’s last half hour, an idyllic reunion of the couple (and the best directed sequence in the picture) for a sort of “condemned man’s last meal” (he’s being shipped off to California; she’s going to an old age home for women) as they return to the site of their honeymoon and are given a royal reception by strangers, the antithesis of their treatment during the film’s preceding hour by their own children. It certainly helps to make the film’s final agonizing moments more endurable.
Beulah Bondi gives the film’s most astonishing performance. Playing a character clearly twenty or thirty years her senior, she’s completely and utterly believable as an old woman and heartrending in every scene as the loving mother who simply can’t seem to do anything right. Victor Moore, certainly better known as a comic presence in scores of movies before this one, plays against type here and offers a lovely, affectionate glimpse of resigned old age. Future Oscar-winners Thomas Mitchell and Fay Bainter play off one another’s guilt and guile beautifully while Maurice Moscovitch steals all of his scenes as the amiable storekeeper who can offer friendship and simple advice without expecting anything in return. Louise Beavers as the maid Mamie also figures wonderfully in a couple of quite unforgettable scenes.
Video Rating: 3/5 3D Rating: NA
Audio Rating: 3.5/5
Special Features Rating: 2.5/5
Gary Giddins Interview (20:09, HD): the film critic speaks on the film’s achievements, its handling of the societal move away from children’s assuming responsibility for their aging parents, and its place in the film oeuvre of Leo McCarey. He also covers some of the same ground as Bogdanovich in discussing McCarey’s place in the industry during his own era and today.
Thirty-Page Booklet: contains complete cast and crew lists, a selection of stills from the film, and three fascinating essays: critic Tag Gallagher’s analysis of the movie in depth, director Bernard Tavernier’s celebration of the movie and his memorable first and subsequent encounters with it, and excerpts from critic Robin Wood’s examination of the movie in his book Sexual Politics & Narrative Film.
Timeline: can be pulled up from the menu or by pushing the red button on the remote. It shows you your progress on the disc and the title of the chapter you’re now in. Additionally, two other buttons on the remote can place or remove bookmarks if you decide to stop viewing before reaching the end of the film or want to mark specific places for later reference.
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewed By: Matt Hough
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