There’s a lot of love for this film, and it’s easy to see why. It did, after all, inspire Ozu’s Tokyo Story. Two doddering old folks (in reality, actors Bondi and Moore aged 49 and 61 respectively) are left feeling like spare change when they have to move in with their children. To Leo McCarey and writer Viña Delmar’s credit, they never let a happy ending get in the way of a good dose of misery. Sure, there are some overly sentimental moments, but it’s hard not to feel heart pangs during the hotel ballroom sequence. Moore and Bondi are wonderful too. Yet it’s also relentlessly downbeat, a product of the Depression rather than an escape from it. McCarey, however, won his Oscar for the other film he released that year, screwball comedy The Awful Truth.