The Criterion Collection just released a DVD of Leo McCarey's "Make Way For Tomorrow." It's about an elderly couple dealing with the physical and financial realities of aging and how their adult children strain to figure out what to do with them. Hardly blockbuster, high money stuff. But unexpectedly, Criterion roused a torrent. This rarely seen financial failure, which served as a model for "Tokyo Story," is ripping through the blogosphere, reducing cynical, hard edge critics, who think they've seen everything movies can offer, into a group of swooning school girls.
TOKYO STORY
"A heartfelt, deeply affecting look at aging, " says DVD Verdict. "The
tears that come are more than earned," adds Slant Magazine. "Masterwork,"writes the uncompromising Village Voice, while Dave Kehr blogged "... one of the great films from anytime, anywhere."Roger Ebert wrote, "It is remarkable that a film this true and unrelenting was made in Hollywood in 1937."
The MLB joins the swoonsters. Though "Make Way For Tomorrow" is 73 years old, it couldn't be more timely.
The US Census states clearly: 1 of every 8 individuals is over 65. That will double to 1 in 4 by 2030. The largest population group in the country is the baby-boomers -- those between 50 and 65. Never have so many older people made up such a large percentage of the population. Of course movies market to 35 and under, virtually ignoring anyone north of 50. When an effort is made, we get a syrupy "Cacoon," or "On Golden Pond," or the cranky implausibility of "Grumpy Old Men." (Exceptions that prove the rule: "The Mother," "Grand Torino.") And the recent "Julie and Julia," which set records among the AARP set, hardly represents how older people think, feel, and actually live. So MWFT, rising so far above those films, becomes the right film at the right time, filling a present day artistic and psychological need.
But let's start with the movie shaped from the mold of "Make Way For Tomorrow" -- from Japan where they claim to know a thing or two about older folks -- Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story."
TOKYO STORY (1953)
When an aging couple, Shukichi and Tomi, visit their adult children and grandchildren they find them so preoccupied with their busy lives, so self-centered, they feel not only out of touch, but in the way. They are not proud of their children. Traditionally, Japanese parents derive a sense of personal worth and well-being from their offspring. But this is post-war Japan and things, they are a changin.' Shukichi and Tomi feel lost and bereft. It's a classic, forthright tale of changing times passing-by the older generation.
Always placing among the best of the best in the best-film-of-all-time Grail, this Ozu masterpiece deals with his usual themes of family and home -- the stresses of working and living and how difficult it is for families to stay together: life moves on, things happen quickly, people change.
Ozu chronicles the psychological cost. But it's his visuals that lift the film beyond a story beautifully told and into the realm of classic. Ozu is known for placing his camera on the floor, directly facing the characters so we sense the full effect of what they are feeling. And with the frequent use of right angle shots with family groups filling the frame (as in Make Way For Tomorrow) creating a portrait of conflict between individual emotions and family expectations.
This signature technique is never more effective than during the film's ending with the father alone in his home. I won't spoil it with description, except to say it becomes its own short story -- a moving, honest narrative of all our futures.
MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937)
Cinematic Chekov? Like the Master's short stories, the movie is quiet and subtle, while brimming with character and visual detail (the film rewards multiple viewings). The story is about an elderly couple, Lucy (Beulah Bondi) and Bark (Victor Moore), who, unable to afford their life-long home, attempt to find a place to spend their last years in dignity. Their adult children, attempting to help, end up humiliating them. Chekovian in its simple telling about real human beings -- they aren't political (1937 was the first year of Social Security) or artistic symbols. At times they can be unlikable, just like the rest of us. But they create a driving emotional force that comes out of their mundane and routine labors to live the best they can. And the story is all the more affecting because of it.
McCarey is not as pictorially vivid as Ozu; his camera is more straight-on, his cutting more linear. But oh, how he works with faces -- a story wonderfully told through facial expressions. Note the individual expressions among the group as Lucy and Bark tell their children they have no place to live. 
Or how Lucy responds to being confronted by her daughter-in-law (and at this point we're on the daughter-in-law's side, Lucy has been nothing but annoying) with sad recognition of the inevitable. Or the absolutely remarkable expression of hesitant desire from Lucy as she turns towards the audience while Bark tries to kiss her in public. Wish there was still from that sequence.
This movie shines with a hard truth about normal living. As it goes along and you realize it isn't caving in to a sappy, happy ending (producer Adolph Zucker and McCarey fought over the ending and when the film failed at the box office, Zucker fired him) you feel how skillfully you've been pulled along. Almost beyond your will you're giving in to this couple.
And the ending? At the train station. Among the greatest. As Orson Welles said, "It'll make a stone cry." 
The world dances on. Bye
