No place for parents
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | No place for parents |
| Original title | Make Way for Tomorrow |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1937 |
| length | approx. 92 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Leo McCarey |
| script | Viña Delmar |
| production | Leo McCarey, Adolph Zukor for Paramount Pictures |
| music |
George Antheil , Victor Young |
| camera | William C. Mellor |
| cut | LeRoy Stone |
| occupation | |
| |
No Place for Parents is a 1937 American drama directed by Leo McCarey. It is about an elderly couple, played by Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi , who have to separate from each other after getting into financial trouble. They hardly get any support from their five children. The socially critical film was not a great success when it was released and was long forgotten. Today, however, it has received a lot of critical acclaim and was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2010 .
action
America in the Great Depression : Elderly Barkley and Lucy Cooper lose their home to foreclosure after Barkley cannot find a new job because of his age. They gather four of their five grown children (one daughter lives thousands of kilometers away) to tell them about the bad situation. The children quickly realize with horror that they have to take in their parents, otherwise they would be on the street. But apart from daughter Nellie, the children have no space for both parents, but only for one parent each. From now on Lucy and Barkley have to live 300 kilometers away: Lucy with son George, Barkley with daughter Cora. Nellie promises that she will ask her wealthy husband Harvey to accept both parents, but when she later asks Harvey half-heartedly, he harshly refuses.
Lucy moves to their son George with his wife Anita in New York . Anita and George are also struggling with the economic crisis, so Anita leads an evening bridge course for better society in her apartment for additional money , whereby the grandmother proves to be a nuisance. She also annoys the friends of her 17-year-old granddaughter Rhoda with countless ancient anecdotes . Lucy does what she wants in her daughter-in-law's household. She undermines Anita's authority when she does not tell her that Rhoda regularly goes out with men in the evenings. Meanwhile, Lucy tries to look positively into the future and hopes for an early solution, even though she secretly knows that her husband has no chance of a job.
Barkeley lives with daughter Cora and is still looking for work, because this is the only way he can reunite with his wife - but because of his age he only receives rejections. He receives more help from the Jewish shopkeeper Max Rubens, who has had similar experiences with his children, than from his harsh daughter Cora, especially since her own husband is also unemployed. The stubborn Barkley wanders the freezing streets of the city in search of work and catches a cold. When Barkley is in bed with a cold, Cora wants to take him to a place with a milder climate for his health and suggests that he move to the other daughter, Addie, in warm California - apparently worried about his health, but in reality she wants just have him out of the house. Barkley agrees with his daughter Cora to move to California, thousands of miles away, although he suspects her true motivation.
George and Anita are also looking for a way to get rid of Lucy, but do not tell her that in open conversation. Still, Barkley and Lucy feel that they are actually undesirable. George and Anita plan to put Lucy in a retirement home, which Lucy learns by accident. But Lucy wants to spare her son, in a fit of motherly love, from bringing up this delicate matter herself, which is why she goes to him and says that she wants to move to the retirement home of her own accord - in reality, she finds retirement homes a terrible place.
Lucy and Barkley walk through the streets of New York one more time, on the day Barkley has to take the late train to California. The old couple visits the hotel where they spent their honeymoon 50 years ago and spend their last hours there very happily. They have no money, but complete strangers are respectful, generous and helpful towards the couple - in contrast to their self-centered and unhelpful children. For example, when they go to the dance floor, a very fast song is suddenly played and both can no longer keep up - the Kapellmeister sees this and plays slower music. Lucy and Barkley skip a farewell dinner with their children for the trip to the hotel and soberly inform them on the phone. The children suddenly start to doubt their own behavior and they reproach themselves and the others. But the time has now progressed too far that they can no longer catch the train to say goodbye to their father.
At the platform, Lucy and Barkley say goodbye, who promises her to find a job in California and then to bring her to his home. Lucy says that she is sure that they will meet again and that all is well. Then there is a real farewell: they say that they should first assume that they will not see each other again because so much could happen. Both confess their lifelong love one last time before Barkley gets on the train alone. The film closes with Lucy's last look at the departing train. It is questionable whether they will see each other again.
production
Make Way for Tomorrow is based on the 1934 novel Years Are So Long by Josephine Lawrence and an unpublished play by Helen and Nolan Leary based on the novel by Lawrence. The novel and the play were processed into a script by Viña Delmar . Another inspiration for director Leo McCarey was the death of his father just before filming began. McCarey later said that he should honor his father and his generation with this film. There should have been a very thoughtful mood on the film set during the shoot. Many of those involved are said to have written letters to their parents for the first time in a long time and cried while filming. Leading actor Victor Moore later recalled that an older extra came up to him and said, “You and Beulah are playing this story. I live it. ”Studio boss Adolph Zukor wanted to add a happy ending to Make Way for Tomorrow to make the story more profitable at the box office, but McCarey stood firm and turned it down.
Although the film is mainly to be seen as a drama, McCarey - among other things, director of several Laurel and Hardy films - also brought comedic scenes into the film. McCarey later said, “It was the saddest story I've ever made, but it was also very funny. It's hard for me to talk about, but I think it was a very nice movie. "
In the main roles, McCarey opted for recognized and experienced character actors who, however, were not "movie stars" in the true sense and otherwise mostly only played supporting roles. Beulah Bondi has been known as the actress of mothers in numerous films, her perhaps most famous role being the mother of James Stewart in Isn't Life Beautiful? (1946). Bondi was only 48 years old when the film was shot, making her the same age as the cast of her film children, which is why her black hair had to be dyed white. The male lead was played by 61-year-old Victor Moore, which was also a surprise: Moore was considered a comedy actor with decades of experience, but he rarely played in serious roles. Still, both Moore and Bondi received good reviews for their appearances, and Moore later named the film his favorite.
synchronization
The dubbed version was created in 1983 for ARD at Studio Hamburg .
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Lucy Cooper | Beulah Bondi | Tilli Breidenbach |
| Barkley Cooper | Victor Moore | Hans Hessling |
| Anita Cooper | Fay Bainter | Marlen Diekhoff |
| Max Rubens (shopkeeper) | Maurice Moscovitch | Wolf Rahtjen |
| Cora Payne | Elisabeth Risdon | Monika Peitsch |
| Nellie Chase | Minna Gombell | Renate Pichler |
| Rhoda Cooper | Barbara Reed | Astrid Kollex |
| Doctor from Barkley | Louis Jean Heydt | Peter Lakenmacher |
reception
Make Way for Tomorrow received praise from critics when it was released on May 7, 1937, but the box office flopped. There was some criticism of the film in the American public because the film shows the provocative situation in which children leave their ever-caring parents alone in old age and separate them from one another for selfish reasons. In addition, it could have contributed to the failure of the film that the cast consisted exclusively of actual supporting actors and not of film stars. In Germany, the film was first broadcast on television in 1983. No place for parents is now considered one of the unjustly forgotten film jewels from Hollywood.
Numerous directors praised this film: John Ford counted Make Way for Tomorrow among his favorite films and Jean Renoir and Ernst Lubitsch also admired this film. Frank Capra even wrote a letter to Leo McCarey in which he expressed his praise. Orson Welles called it the saddest movie ever and said, "It would make a stone cry." Welles also talked about Make Way for Tomorrow in his interviews with Peter Bogdanovich , published in the book This is Orson Welles . Bogdanovich, in turn, enthusiastically wrote a DVD commentary for the film. Leo McCarey also later described the film as his best film. When McCarey won the Oscar for best director for the comedy The Terrible Truth , released that year, he said on stage, "Thank you very much, but you gave it to me for the wrong movie."
The screenwriter Kogo Noda saw the film in Japanese cinemas . A few years later, Make Way for Tomorrow influenced the Japanese film The Journey to Tokyo (1953), directed by Ozu Yasujirō , with a screenplay by Noda. The trip to Tokyo is considered by many film critics to be one of the best films of all time.
After Make Way For Tomorrow was long forgotten by critics, it has received a lot of praise and recognition in recent years, among other things due to its inclusion in the National Film Registry . All 14 reviews of the film were positive on the American review portal Rotten Tomatoes . The lexicon of international films describes the film as a “sentimental drama that caused storms of protest at the time with its bleak subject matter.” Hans Schmid from the German online magazine Telepolis devoted a very detailed and praising review to the film in 2013: “It is the saddest film that i have ever seen and one of the most beautiful. A masterpiece of straightforward directing, narrative economy and minimalism that unleashes the imagination. ”He also praised the consistent avoidance of Hollywood clichés, the subtle direction by McCarey and the actors like Beulah Bondi. The US film critic Roger Ebert included the film in his best list in February 2010 and found the last part of the film in particular to be "beautiful and heartbreaking". The film is not sentimental, but great and very sad. Ebert particularly emphasized the achievements of the actors. No place for parents is now part of the Criterion Collection , where he is touted as one of the “purest teardroppers” with a “determined ending”.
Awards
- 2010: Entry into the National Film Registry
Web links
- Full review at Telepolis
- Make Way for Tomorrow in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b "No Room for Parents" at Turner Classic Movies
- ^ Review of the film by Slant Magazine
- ↑ a b Peter Bogdanovich on "Make Way For Tomorrow"
- ↑ No space for parents. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 23, 2017 .
- ^ Review of the film at Telepolis
- ^ Roger Ebert: Make Way for Tomorrow Movie Review (1937) | Roger Ebert. Retrieved October 28, 2017 (English).
- ^ Make Way for Tomorrow. Retrieved October 28, 2017 .