NR | 1h 39m | Drama | 1939
Director Harold Bucquet’s introductory text unashamedly warns that his yarn, set in a little town in America, is “an absurd … stupendous story.” He and his crew make no apologies for their outlandish, fairy-tale plotline, which they claim to have drawn from one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” Impishly, Bucquet adds, “Mr. Chaucer liked the tale and believed it—and so do we. If perchance you don’t believe it, we respectfully insist that we and Mr. Chaucer must be right. Because faith still performs miracles and a good deed does find its just reward.”
Old, wheelchair-bound Julian Northrup (Lionel Barrymore) lives with his wife, Nellie (Beulah Bondi); they’re just “Gramps” and “Granny” to their 8-year-old grandson Pud (Bobs Watson). Enter Death personified, Mr. Brink (Cedric Hardwicke) whose mere visit can mean death. As it happens, he does an awful lot of visiting.
Brink visits Pud’s parents while they’re on a drive. The ensuing car crash leaves Pud orphaned, but not without a small fortune. Pud’s avaricious Aunt Demetria (Eily Malyon) has one eye on that fortune, and therefore, another eye on becoming the boy’s guardian. If only his grandparents were out of the way. Gramps, incurably attached to his grandson, will have none of it. He’d rather that Pud grows up curious, courageous, and caring, than a conniving, clinging caricature of Demetria herself. Brink visits Gramps but circumstances intervene; Gramps escapes by a whisker. Undeterred, Brink visits Granny; nothing intervenes. Gramps is inconsolable until his young housekeeper Marcia (Una Merkel) cheers him up.
Pud believes something he read in a storybook: If you do a good deed and make a wish, it’ll come true. Naturally, Gramps, fresh off a good deed, makes a wish, ordering Brink to stay up on the apple tree in his yard after tricking him into climbing it. Now, a new rule is set and it isn’t Brink’s: No one dies unless Gramps wills Brink down from the tree. Oddly, only Gramps and Pud can see and hear Brink. This oddity doesn’t escape Demetria. Pud’s fortune is fast fading from her grasp. She persuades town doctor, Dr. James Evans (Henry Travers) that Gramps has lost it. She forces him to hand over custody of Pud, and his generous inheritance, to her. But Gramps isn’t about to give up his beloved Pud easily. Not if Pud, who loves his Gramps almost as much, has his way.
Dying to Live, A Little Longer
Hardwicke’s character’s name is, of course, a cheeky play on the phrase “on the brink of death.” He plays Death with tongue so firmly in cheek that even his humor has a deathly pallor to it.
When Gramps says cheerily, “Live and let live, that’s my motto,” Brink deadpans, “You can hardly expect me to second that.”
When Brink sneaks up whispering, and Gramps asks him what he’s said, Brink icily hints that it isn’t people’s ability to hear Death’s voice that’s wanting, it’s their willingness, “Most people don’t hear me the first time.”
When Granny asks indignantly why she must accompany Brink, he replies, “It’s customary.”
Bucquet starts with an end rather than a beginning. He introduces Death. From then on, his principal characters are buying time or trying to freeze it when Brink visits. Granny wants a few seconds to finish her knitting. Gramps wants a few years to ensure Pud’s not straitjacketed by what Demetria’s got planned. Never mind that Brink is challenging them all: If they accept birth, growing up, marrying, having children and grandchildren, and even aging with equanimity, why not death?
Sure, Demetria and Brink sometimes look chirpy in comparison, but Gramps’s grouchiness is a guise. He calls Granny “Miss Nellie,” as if freezing time—as if that maiden nickname keeps her as young and as beautiful as when they first met. Watch him affectionately pat her cheek as he’s about to head off on a fishing trip with Pud. Then, he reassuringly pats her shoulder when a determined Demetria visits, with news of the premature deaths of Pud’s parents.
At one point, Granny scolds Gramps for spoiling Pud with his spiritedness, “He mimics everything you do.” You’ll have to watch until the end to realize just how right she is.
