Make Way for Tomorrow

Leo McCarey

United States

1937

92 minutes

Black and White

1.33:1

English

505

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 CooperVictor Moore
Lucy CooperBeulah Bondi
Anita CooperFay Bainter
George CooperThomas Mitchell
Harvey ChasePorter Hall
Rhoda CooperBarbara Read
Max RubensMaurice Moscovitch
Cora PayneElisabeth Risdon
Nellie ChaseMinna Gombell
Robert CooperRay Mayer
Bill PayneRalph Remley
MamieLouise Beavers

Credits

DirectorLeo McCarey
ProducerLeo McCarey and Adolph Zukor
ScreenplayViña Delmar
Based on a novel byJosephine Lawrence
And a play byHelen and Nolan Leary
CinematographyWilliam C. Mellor
Special photographic effectsGordon Jennings
Art directionHans Dreier and Bernard Herzbrun
EditingLeRoy Stone
SoundWalter Oberst and Don Johnson
Interior decorationsA. E. Freudeman
MusicVictor Young and George Antheil
Musical directionBoris 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

Press Notes: Make Way for Tomorrow

Mar 2, 2010

Let’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 . . .

Make Way for Tomorrow:
We Laugh, and Our Hearts Ache

by Bertrand Tavernier 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 Tag Gallagher Feb 23, 2010

D-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, 2010

Hollywood 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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Next to Jean Renoir's "The Southerner"

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They Gave McCarey Oscar for the Right Picture!

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Available Editions

Make Way for Tomorrow  Criterion DVD Add to Cart

23 Feb 2010

DVD

SRP: $29.95

Criterion Store price

$23.96