[8]

Leo McCarey won the best director Oscar for The Awful Truth, released the same year, but told the Academy they'd awarded him for the wrong picture. He may be right. Make Way for Tomorrow is a disarming, bonafide love story between an elderly couple (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) who are forced to separate when the bank forecloses on their home. The film is remarkably restrained and unsentimental for its time. The characters constantly mask their true feelings, fending off melodrama by acting against our immediate expectations.

The old husband and wife, living far apart with different children, miss each other terribly and long for a reunion that grows increasingly unlikely to occur. There’s a scene where an entire room of bridge players overhears Mother’s long-distance phone call with Father. Over the course of her conversation, the room grows still and silent as the players eavesdrop, all of them moved by the quiet longing and struggle for dignity to which they’re witness. There are many other moving scenes, including the climax where neither Mom nor Dad are willing to admit that they may never see each other again.

Make Way for Tomorrow lets the audience fill in a lot of gaps — not narratively, but emotionally — and it isn’t hard to do. It’s all the more powerful for extending us that invitation. It’s a very moving film. While McCaey’s An Affair to Remember is often considered one of the most romantic movies ever made, Make Way for Tomorrow can certainly give it a run for its money. (And my money’s on the old folks.)