Serpent's tooth

Make Way for Tomorrow

(1937)

Wow! I had read about this--Anthony Lane's book, maybe?--some time ago, but it was a colleague's recent recommendation that got it to the top of my queue, and thanks to her. This is, in my experience, a unique film, and a quietly great one.

Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi play Mr. and Mrs. Lear, essentially, and while none of their five children is quite Regan-or-Gonerilesque, neither is any of them remotely Cordelia-like. The septuagenarian parents are rendered homeless by the Depression, and while most of the kids have reasonably good intentions, they also all have their own lives and their own families, and screenwriter Viña Delmar and director Leo McCarey are honest enough to depict the old folks as . . . well, as difficult to be around as even old folks we love can be.

Not sure how I'd have reacted to this had I seen it when I was in my 30s or 40s, but, barely a decade from my own 70s, I found it sobering. During the couple's final evening in Manhattan before Bart has to board a train to California to stay with the child who is perhaps least willing (though it's a tight race) to house one parent and is--like all her siblings--adamant that she can't handle both, strangers are more hospitable to them than are their own children, and the sequence defines "bittersweet." And the ending would have been a slap in the face to any audience, but I can barely imagine how it would have been greeted during the same era when Fred and Ginger were kicking up their feet--always in unison at the fadeout.

I'm not naïve enough not to realize that there are many great films I still haven't seen, but it's always gratifying to discover one. If you're unfamiliar with this, familiarize yourself.