Like many other French cinephiles, I discovered Make Way for Tomorrow relatively late, although we had been interested in Leo McCarey for years. We had hunted down his Laurel and Hardy pictures, adored Duck Soup, the best of the Marx Brothers films, considered The Awful Truth a classic, and stood up for An Affair to Remember in the face of the critical establishment. (I do wonder if we were right to defend Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys!, in which Joan Collins whispers, I believe, “Pink peignoir, pink boudoir, pink me.” It’s a film I saw five times in a row and haven’t dared to look at again in three decades.)
Delmar Daves was the first person I knew of to warmly praise Make Way for Tomorrow, in the early sixties, leading us to the discovery of a film that had not yet been released in France. Daves had served as McCarey’s cowriter on Love Affair and its remake, An Affair to Remember, which included those sequences from the first version that had been cut or never filmed. Daves considered Make Way for Tomorrow one of McCarey’s masterpieces, one of the greatest American films ever made, and one of the most egregiously overlooked. He had no end of praise for it, passionately telling us about the film’s emotional intensity and, particularly, its last thirty minutes. He compared its emotional impact to that of the silent films of Frank Borzage.
A few years later, producer and screenwriter Sidney Buchman told me Make Way for Tomorrow was McCarey’s favorite of his films—and the one that led him to take his revenge on Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn. Whenever McCarey went over budget or fell behind schedule while shooting The Awful Truth, Cohn relentlessly reminded him of Make Way’s commercial failure. After The Awful Truth’s triumphant release, McCarey led Cohn to believe he would renew his contract with Columbia. But the day before they had agreed to sign, McCarey published an ad in Variety announcing he had just signed with RKO for Going My Way.
John Ford and Jean Renoir were equally fervent in their admiration for Make Way for Tomorrow. When Pierre Rissient finally distributed it in France in the midsixties (along with Ruggles of Red Gap, which was just as hard to find and equally overlooked), and I worked with him on the release, Renoir wrote a few enthusiastic lines to be added to earlier praise from Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, and Daves.
My former wife, Colo O’Hagan, prepared the subtitles with historian Bernard Eisenschitz. I remember that she was in tears as she typed them up. She was still overwhelmed by the profound emotion the film had stirred up in her.
Despite a warm critical reception, the film did not do well at the box office. We had implored the critics not to summarize its plot, to find a literary way of describing the film’s emotional tone without revealing it was about a couple of old people sent off to separate retirement homes by their children, but our pleas often fell on deaf ears. And once the film’s plotline was disclosed, the positive effect of the critics’ praise was wiped out.
I will never forget my amazement when I saw the print Rissient received from the United States, which he showed me right away. That screening remains one of the most powerful moments of the decade for me. The nearly miraculous way in which McCarey manages to avoid the bathos inherent in such a subject, steering clear of sticky pity, of condescension and moralizing sermons—it all transfixed me. It was as though an arrow had struck me and stayed vibrating in my heart.
I’ve experienced the same feeling every time I’ve seen the film in the forty years since. It’s the same feeling I get when I see Borzage’s 7th Heaven or Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. As in both those films, McCarey immediately finds the exact distance he must be from his characters. We’re always in among them, in their places, feeling everything they experience—yet at the same time, McCarey keeps us just far enough away that we can be witness to their flaws and blunders, both comical and poignant. Like Borzage, he uses humor, the comedy of certain unexpected reactions, to defuse the traps of melodrama. He is assisted in his achievement by the magnificent performances of Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi, probably in the best roles of their careers.
And our laughter—for we often laugh during Make Way for Tomorrow—increases the emotional impact tenfold. We laugh, and our hearts ache . . . McCarey remains the great specialist of these shifts in tone and mood, as seen in certain sequences of Love Affair and, of course, in the Gettysburg Address scene in Ruggles of Red Gap. This is a laughter that grips your heart and “rattles the cage,” as they say in Quebec. Like certain scenes in Chekhov, where we move from laughter to tears without warning, with a sudden, painfully smooth fluidity. Like life, when we know how to observe it and faithfully put it on the screen.
Director and writer Bertrand Tavernier’s latest film is La Princesse de Montpensier, a love story set in the sixteenth century. He is the author of 50 ans de cinéma américain (with Jean-Pierre Coursodon); Amis américains, entretiens avec les grands auteurs d’Hollywood, a collection of his 1960s interviews with Hollywood directors; and La guerre sans nom: Les appelés d’Algérie (with Patrick Rotman), and is a frequent contributor to La croix, Positif, and Film Comment.
Translated by Nicholas Elliott.
1937
92 min
Black and White
1.33:1
Categories: Film Essays
8 Comments
Tue 23 Feb at 02:19 PM
Leslie Weisman
Thank you, M. Tavernier, for your superb commentary, which not only provides critical historical background on this extraordinary film
-one for which I have been searching in vain for years-but echoes many of my own convictions and sentiments. Just knowing that it will now be available worldwide, its greatness manifested and recognized by a whole new generation of cinephiles, brings tears to my eyes, recalling those I shed many years ago when I saw the film in a rare TV broadcast.Thank you again, so much. And a thousand thanks to Criterion for making this treasure available to a wider audience, which I know will give Carey’s masterpiece the deep respect, appreciation and affection it always should have had.
Tue 23 Feb at 04:26 PM
David Hollingsworth
To be honest, I never actually heard of the film, but thanks to Criterion (of course), I can now discover, and hope to rediscover for many years to come, McCarey’s masterpiece that I have apparently missed.
Tue 23 Feb at 11:05 PM
Jonathan McMillan
After only one day there are numerous reviews available to read. Taste being a very personal thing; many people are completely taken with the picture, while others express no fondness at all. For me, this picture is less an entertainment and more a meditation. An aching, request to pause for thought. I could not readily watch this with a group; only with a trusted loved-one: its place within me is that personal. Coupled with that is the regard, as an actor, that I have for Miss Bondi’s marvellous characterization of Lucy Cooper. I felt it when I first saw it in 1974, again in the late 90’s and surely again, when the dvd arrives at our mailbox in the coming weeks.
Wed 24 Feb at 06:35 AM
A. Stribling
Gorgeous film, anguishing to watch, but I can finally retire my VHS copy. Much thanks for the Peter Bogdonovich commentary. In his interview tapes “This is Orson Welles,” when he asks Welles about this picture, you can hear his voice cracking, “My god! I watched it four times and cried my eyes out every time!” I can easily see how this film could have influenced his original vision for “The Magnificent Ambersons” where it ended with Aunt Fanny and Eugene in an old boarding house.
Wed 24 Feb at 07:03 PM
Sally Bergman
I can’t wait to get this DVD, both the director and the actors have long been favorites of mine. I also was thrilled to read Bertrand Tavernier’s comments, who currently is my favorite French director.
I hope he has some new films coming out soon that will be made into DVDs to enjoy over and over and add to my collection of his works.
Wed 24 Feb at 11:15 PM
Dan Mohr
Wow. Just…wow.
It isn’t every month, or even every year, that you’re lucky enough to see something and immediately afterwards have to acknowledge, “well, that’s one of the hundred greatest movies I’ve ever seen in my entire lifetime.”
Orson Welles once compared his own cinema aesthetic to other directors who had a certain simplicity of approach to their moviemaking, which didn’t overtly draw attention to itself, yet still managed to magnificently evoke the full breadth of human experience; he was discussing Jean Renoir’s direction of ‘The Rules of the Game’, and said something like, “I wish I could do that, but I can’t.” I’m guessing Welles probably felt the same way about Leo McCarey’s work on ‘Make Way For Tomorrow’.
I don’t regularly shed tears at movies, but after having just watching ‘MWFT’ for the very first time, I’m shredded! Be sure to have the requisite box of Kleenex on standby for this one… Thank you, Criterion, thank you!
Thu 25 Feb at 09:06 PM
Jonathan McMillan
I wonder Dan, if you can imagine the envy (however mild) of one who saw this picture in 1974; to be reading your soulful reaction to seeing if for the first time; and fully restored?! But then, just to have been able to see this movie at all…ever.
Funny, in another comment I also referred to this picture as ‘MWFT’. Wouldn’t it be wonderful one day, for it to be so well known in this same way that GWTW, AMOLAD or IKWIG are?
Thu 25 Mar at 04:21 PM
Lee Ann
I watched ‘Make Way For Tomorrow’ last week, and still can’t get it out of my mind. The scene toward the end when the bandleader stops the orchestra and leads them into ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’ is one of the most touching things ever. I think he even had a tear rolling down his cheek. Also, the cast was so extraordinary, from the obvious magnificence of the leads to the supporting players, particularly the great Thomas Mitchell. The friend at the grocery store was marvelous as well, and the ugly anti-semitic undertones were definitely there in the scene with the chicken soup being brought to the daughter’s house. I enjoyed this film immensely, and truly appreciated the commentary of the marvelous Peter Bogdanovich, who happens to be a treasure trove of film information. He makes everything so fun to watch. Thanks, Criterion, for bringing this beautiful film out so anyone can see it!!
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