Make Way for Tomorrow is almost the same exact story as Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Monogatari: a story about feeling like a stranger with one’s own children, old age and the possibility of death. It was John Ford’s favorite film, and it was also McCarey’s favorite personal work – which is not saying little, considering that during that same decade he directed Duck Soup, The Awful Truth and Love Affair. An old couple is forced to separate. They are nothing more than an embarrassment to their children, even if they are not aware of it, or at least they do not want to admit it: they behave with humility and graciousness. Performing polite gestures and cold reasoning are basic elements of everyday life, and probably no one has studied them like Leo McCarey. A rather courageous move is the way he lets the old couple’s not very diplomatic behavior become offensive. They become annoying and irritating to the point of being cruel and vulgar. The few gags accentuate the social drama of the generational gap: what is it like being old and intimidated in a society of superficial efficacy and simulated haste? Time is like a protagonist in this drama. At first it takes the form of boredom: the old couple no longer checks the time, silence, non-events – and their life looks this way from the point of view of the neurotic middle age. Then time becomes denser in the last half-hour. The old couple has just five hours to see each other and say goodbye to their children. The story ends on a station platform. The husband is on the train, and the wife stays behind in the station. They both know that this is their last goodbye and the final scene of their life together. The departure is like a small death. Words are not needed, but he says that every moment was like a party, the simplest expression of the meaning of love to be found in film. The final scene is a wonderful example of what Jean Renoir meant when he said “Leo McCarey understood human beings – perhaps better than anyone else in Hollywood”.

Peter von Bagh