Press Notes: Make Way for Tomorrow
Mar 2, 2010Let’s start out with Dave Kehr in the New York Times: “There are few American films as subtle, moving, and bursting with human truth as Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, and few that have been . . .
Synopsis
Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow is one of the great unsung Hollywood masterpieces, an enormously moving Depression-era depiction of the frustrations of family, aging, and the generation gap. Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi headline a cast of incomparable character actors, starring as an elderly couple who must move in with their grown children after the bank takes their home, yet end up separated and subject to their offspring’s selfish whims. An inspiration for Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Make Way for Tomorrow is among American cinema’s purest tearjerkers, all the way to its unflinching ending, which McCarey refused to change despite studio pressure.
Cast
| Barkley Cooper | Victor Moore |
| Lucy Cooper | Beulah Bondi |
| Anita Cooper | Fay Bainter |
| George Cooper | Thomas Mitchell |
| Harvey Chase | Porter Hall |
| Rhoda Cooper | Barbara Read |
| Max Rubens | Maurice Moscovitch |
| Cora Payne | Elisabeth Risdon |
| Nellie Chase | Minna Gombell |
| Robert Cooper | Ray Mayer |
| Bill Payne | Ralph Remley |
| Mamie | Louise Beavers |
Credits
| Director | Leo McCarey |
| Producer | Leo McCarey and Adolph Zukor |
| Screenplay | Viña Delmar |
| Based on a novel by | Josephine Lawrence |
| And a play by | Helen and Nolan Leary |
| Cinematography | William C. Mellor |
| Special photographic effects | Gordon Jennings |
| Art direction | Hans Dreier and Bernard Herzbrun |
| Editing | LeRoy Stone |
| Sound | Walter Oberst and Don Johnson |
| Interior decorations | A. E. Freudeman |
| Music | Victor Young and George Antheil |
| Musical direction | Boris Morros |
Disc Features
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- Tomorrow, Yesterday, and Today, a new video interview featuring filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich discussing the career of Leo McCarey and Make Way for Tomorrow
- New video interview with critic Gary Giddins in which he talks about McCarey’s artistry and the political and social context of the film
- PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by critic Tag Gallagher and filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, and an excerpt from film scholar Robin Wood’s 1998 piece “Leo McCarey and ‘Family Values’”
From the Current
Make Way for Tomorrow:
We Laugh, and Our Hearts Ache
by
Feb 23, 2010
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 . . .
Make Way for Lucy . . .
by Feb 23, 2010D-day, June 6, 1944. John Ford was there. It was the most vivid experience of his life, he said. “There was a tremendous sort of spiral of events all over the world, and it seemed to narrow down to each . . .
Make Way for a “Great Movie”
Feb 17, 2010Hollywood craftsman Leo McCarey’s long unsung masterwork Make Way for Tomorrow will soon be garnering deserved attention—we’re releasing the Criterion special edition on DVD February 23. The first out of the gate to sing the film’s praises is Roger Ebert, who has just . . .
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