505 Make Way for Tomorrow

[Matt]

Make Way for Tomorrow

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2569/505_Box_348x490_w128.jpg[/img]

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.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Tomorrow, Yesterday, and Today, an interview from 2009 featuring filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich discussing the career of director Leo McCarey and Make Way for Tomorrow
• Video interview from 2009 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 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"


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[Narshty]

When is Make Way for Tomorrow going to make DVD. In high brow circles it is very highly regarded, ostensibly, one of the great films to come out of the Hollywood factory in the 30's.

It was an inspiration for Ozu's Tokyo Story, yet, hardly anyone has seen it.

The best chance would be to email Criterion - they're far more likely to give it a release than Universal (I can't imagine a Beulah Bondi Franchise Collection anytime soon, alas).

(Petition?)

[peerpee]

I'll sign it. I've been trying to licence it for the MoC Series for three years. A stunning film.

[mikeohhh]

Man, my heart jumped out of my chest when I saw the thread title. I thought it had actually just been announced! Yeah, I've probably sent more "mail to Mulvaney" on this one than anything else (give or take Bigger Than Life). Godspeed Nick! I would loooooooooooooooove to see this on MoC. What a movie. Maybe the greatest third act of them all.

[alandau]

Criterion should have released this one. Shame on you Criterion for depriving us.

[Stefan Andersson]

SIX OF A KIND
RUGGLES OF RED GAP
BELLE OF THE NINETIES
MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW
announced for French R2 DVD release, probably Bac Films.
See www.dvdclassik.com

[backstreetsbackalright]

SIX OF A KIND
RUGGLES OF RED GAP
BELLE OF THE NINETIES
MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW
announced for French R2 DVD release, probably Bac Films.
See www.dvdclassik.com

Um, that's sort of huge, no? Straight to the shopping cart with that one.

While I should allow a brief pause before leaping from verifiable good news to reckless speculation, I wonder if a similar package might make its way onto the Eclipse line.

Regarding Ruggles, I'm not one to know the technical problems involved, but I've long heard that it presented some rather strong obstacles in restoration, etc. Anyone else heard that?

[Awesome Welles]

Straight to the shopping cart with that one.

Yes.

I wonder if a similar package might make its way onto the Eclipse line.

Now what?

[Gregory]

I just hunted around on dvdclassik.com and couldn't find the source of this news. Can someone give me a hint?

[Stefan Andersson]

Check this link for McCarey news. Takes you to the first page with McCarey news in the "planning naphtha 2008" thread. Planning means release schedule, verified or un-verified, naphtha means "naphthaliné", old movie (in napthaline, so to speak). This thread is required check-up stuff because here people post DVD news, French or not, as it turns up. THE LAW AND JAKE WADE should be there somewhere also.

Alternative: go to www.ecranlarge.com and check "sorties prochains", upcoming releases, or www.dvdrama.com "planning" link. They also have good DVD reviews.

[jaredsap]

I wonder if a similar package might make its way onto the Eclipse line.

That'd be the release of the year imo, hands down.

[Finch]

I actually asked Nick Wrigley about MoC acquiring the film the other day and he said Universal won't licence it to them, and then I found this on Glenn Kenny's blog.

The French subtitles are not removable and the image looks very soft. I very much doubt that it's going to look any better if Universal ever release this in their own Cinema Classics series (their transfers of Midnight and Easy Living look acceptable, nothing more). The canon titles apart (their Monster Classics and Hitch), they seem to give a shit about their classic catalogue so we can be lucky if they bother to put this out in R1 at all. The fact that MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW is available at all is reason to celebrate. =D>

The disc can be ordered from Amazon France

[Kinsayder]

The French subs are optional on my player. They may be forced for some players, but they are not burnt-in. And yes, the image is soft, but still way better than either of the bootlegs I've seen:

[Person]

So... Universal are willing to license the film to a French company, but not willing to licence it to a UK company - or release it themselves in the UK or USA, for that matter? Cunts.

[exte]

Just read about this movie here and wondered if I still have to buy it from amazon.fr? I guess I could try eBay...

[Matt]

announced

[Finch]

Fuck YES! So pleased this is official now. A fine lineup of extras too though I'd much rather have Tag Gallagher on the video essay than sleeping pill Bogdanovich.

[Michael Kerpan]

I'm sure I'll remain in the minority on this (i.e. NOT a fan). It seems very unsophisticated compared to the depression era works of Ozu, Naruse and Shimizu.

[Matt]

I've only seen it once, MK, but we can form a minority of two on it. If McCarey thought he won his Oscar for "the wrong picture" (The Awful Truth), he was sorely mistaken.

[reno dakota]

I'm sure I'll remain in the minority on this (i.e. NOT a fan). It seems very unsophisticated compared to the depression era works of Ozu, Naruse and Shimizu.

Unsophisticated? Wow, that's one word I would have never thought to use in describing this film. Please explain. Do you mean narratively, or visually, or . . . what?

[Michael Kerpan]

I'm sure I'll remain in the minority on this (i.e. NOT a fan). It seems very unsophisticated compared to the depression era works of Ozu, Naruse and Shimizu.

Unsophisticated? Wow, that's one word I would have never thought to use in describing this film. Please explain. Do you mean narrative, or visually, or . . . what?

Narratively. The set-up strikes me as rather artificial -- and the disposition of "good" parents and "bad" children is simplistic (in Ozu, only Toda Family, modeled on Make Way, comes close to this level of one-sidedness).

[reno dakota]

Narratively. The set-up strikes me as rather artificial -- and the disposition of "good" parents and "bad" children is simplistic (in Ozu, only Toda Family, modeled on Make Way, comes close to this level of one-sidedness).

By set-up, do you mean that an elderly couple defaults on their mortgage and needs to find a new place to live? Or are you taking about how the children initially decide to handle the matter? Either way, I find nothing artificial in a narrative structure that begins with a plausible crisis (particularly given its era) and makes reasonable stabs at a resolution? Could you say more about the artificiality you find here?

As for the "good"/"bad" characterizations, do you find the treatment of the children in MWFT that different from the way Ozu paints Shige and Koichi in Tokyo Story? In each film, I think the children are certainly afflicted with selfishness, but their characters are drawn with enough nuance that we are not forced to see them as "bad" and the parents as "good". Is the problem, for you, that MWFT lacks something of a Noriko character to mediate between the implicit goodness of the parents and the seeming heartlessness of the children?

[Michael Kerpan]

All I can say is that Ozu's Toda Family _feels_ a lot more like Make Way, while Tokyo Story strikes me as almost a rejoinder to the one-sidedness of both Toda Family and Make Way. No time for more detailed discussion till the weekend, alas....

[whaleallright]

This is a beautiful film--subtle in its observation of human interaction. The scenes of dissimulation and self-deception are particularly heartrending.

For example: the scene where Beulah Bondi, as Ma Cooper, pretends that she wants to go to the old folks' home to spare her son, played by Thomas Mitchell, the embarrassment of having to ask her. Mitchell, fully aware of what his mother is doing, nonetheless exhibits his shame as his posture becomes more and more stooped. As I recall, it's all in one take. This is typical of both McCarey's very unflashy style and his way with actors.

Paul Harrill has what I recall as a sensitive appreciation of McCarey at Senses of Cinema.

Is there evidence that Ozu and/or Noda saw this movie? TOKYO STORY seems like a reworking of TODA FAMILY and other wartime and prewar films, all made before Ozu would have had a chance to see MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW. It's possible McCarey's film would have inspired Ozu and Noda to revisit the theme of children's neglect of their elderly parents.

[domino harvey]

McCarey's long been one of Bogdanovich's favorites, but I believe this will actually be the first time he'll be talking about the director on a DVD extra. For that alone this is a pretty great addition.