A lot of people devote themselves to delaying their old age before doing their darnedest to prolong it. Getting old in real life is rarely a bed of roses. In movies, however, it's a time of reflection, renewal, romance and reconnection, as senior citizens seize the opportunity for one last hurrah. Join Cinema Paradiso for the first part of its celebration of the silver screen.
It's often said that age is only a number. In a place as devoted to youth and beauty as Hollywood, however, getting old is more than an occupational hazard. Of course, advances in digital technology mean that it's now possible to de-age performers, as was the case with the venerable stars of Martin Scorsese's gangland epic, The Irishman (2019). But this seems likely to be an exception. as playing the younger version of an established star in a scenario that crosses the decades provides upcoming actors with invaluable experience.
Ironically, the film industry has been undervaluing know-how since the 1950s, when the advent of television prompted a shift in the age demographic of cinema audiences and the studios started pandering to youth in order to keep the box-office tills ringing. The current vogue for effects-laden blockbusters derived from comic-books is the latest phase of this strategy. However, the continuing strength of the home entertainment market and the realisation that older people are partial to an afternoon matinee has seen Hollywood change its stance.
With so many popular stars retaining their commercial value into their sixties and beyond, the studios have decided that they are still capable of carrying storylines rather than merely cropping up in stellar support. Consequently, a fair number of the features in our survey have been made since the millennium, with the majority depicting old age as something to be embraced and enjoyed rather than endured with a bag of humbugs and a beaker of Horlicks.
Taking Stock
Even though you know it's coming, old age still creeps up on you, as it does on the commissionaire of the swanky hotel played by Emil Jannings in F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924), who suddenly finds himself demoted to working as a washroom attendant. This was a key film in the evolution of camera movement and it was made when Erich von Stroheim was one of the most vaunted directors in Hollywood and Gloria Swanson was among its brightest stars. They are reunited in their dotage, as fading diva Norma Desmond and her butler Max von Mayerling, in Billy Wilder's harsh snapshot of the realities of film fame, Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Dimming glory is also the theme of Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (1952), in which an ageing clown prevents ballerina Claire Bloom from committing suicide and helps nudge her towards stardom, while also reliving his own past in a knockabout routine with Buster Keaton. The bitterness behind the laughter similarly simmers to the surface in Herbert Ross's The Sunshine Boys (1975), as vaudeville legends Walter Matthau and George Burns begin bickering after being reunited for a TV special on the history of comedy. This classic two-hander really should be available on disc in this country, but Cinema Paradiso users can see what Peter Falk and Woody Allen made of the roles in John Erman's tele-remake, The Sunshine Boys (1996).
One of the most common themes in films about ageing is the lack of respect shown towards the elderly, who are often castigated for being in the way. This is true of Carlo Battisti in Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D (1952), who can find no one willing to help him and his dog Filke after they are evicted by his unsympathetic landlady. Professor Isak Berg (Victor Sjöström) lives on his own terms, but he also comes to reflect upon his relationships with his late wife and his son when he travels across Sweden to receive a university honour in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957).
Spencer Tracy's Cuban fisherman mulls over his life while seeking to catch a giant marlin in John Sturges's poignant adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (1958), which was remade by Jud Taylor in 1990, with Anthony Quinn in the title role. The sense that an era was ending also pervades Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962), as ageing lawmen Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea go on a last mission to guard a gold shipment. It wasn't just the Old West, however, but also the Hollywood that had immortalised it that seemed to pass into history in Don Siegel's The Shootist (1976), as dying gunslinger John Wayne comes to the aid of landlady Lauren Bacall and her son, Ron Howard, while in Carson City for treatment from doctor pal James Stewart.
As the studio system reinvented itself as part of corporate America, roles for ageing actors on the big screen began to dry up. Many veteran stars had gone into television after their contracts had elapsed and they readily found work in live drama, theatre showcases, soap operas, crime and medical shows, commercials and TV-movies. For a brief moment, the New Hollywood era created Oscar-winning roles for the likes of Art Carney, who is forced to find a new niche with his ginger cat after they are dislodged from their longtime home in Paul Mazursky's Harry and Tonto (1974). But there wasn't much room for senior citizens in the new SFX-bestrewn blockbusters - unless, of course, you discount Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) in George Lucas's Star Wars (1977).
A fantasy from a time and place far far away is recalled in Gavin Millar's Dreamchild (1985), as 80 year-old Alice Hargreaves (Coral Browne) goes to New York in 1932 for the centenary of Lewis Carroll (Ian Holm) and looks back on the relationship that led to the creation of Alice in Wonderland. A similar format of harking back to the past from a bewrinkled present was adopted in both Jon Avnet's Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), in which nursing home resident Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy) tells Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) stories from her past that she hopes will help shape her new friend's future, and in Nick Cassavetes's The Notebook (2004), which begins at another care centre with James Garner reading to Gena Rowlands about the 1940s romance between Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling.
One man who dominated the senior scene in this period was the great Walter Matthau, who refuses to be put into a retirement home and insists on making himself useful to pregnant teenager Deborah Winters in Jack Lemmon's Kotch (1971). Sadly, we can't offer you the joy of seeing Lemmon and Matthau as John Gustafson and Max Goldman in Donald Petrie's Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Howard Deutch's Grumpier Old Men (1995). Maybe in time.
But Cinema Pardiso users will be glad to hear that the pair are on fine form in Martha Coolidge's Out to Sea (1997), as brothers-in-law Lemmon and Matthau become dance hosts on a luxury liner, where they fall foul of entertainment director Brent Spiner. They also excel in reprising their roles from Gene Saks's The Odd Couple (1968) in Howard Deutch's The Odd Couple II (1998), as Felix Ungar (Lemmon) and Oscar Madison (Matthau) reunite en route to the nuptials between Oscar's son and Felix's daughter.
Matthau finds another fine sparring partner in Ossie Davis, as they sit in Central Park and try to put the world to rights in Herb Gardner's I'm Not Rappaport (1996). By contrast, Lemmon comes unstuck in the ruthless world of real estate hustling, as the once unstoppable Shelley 'The Machine' Levene in James Foley's take on David Mamet's Pulitzer-winning dissection of the American Dream, Glengarry Glen Ross (1992).
Slowing down the pace, a small boy lives on a floating monastery with his teacher, an ageing Buddhist monk, in Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (2003), a story that finds a companion in the same director's The Bow (2005), in which the elderly man who has raised his daughter on a fishing boat has to honour the promise to set her free when she turns 17. The contrast between the expectations at the beginning and end of life is also considered in Richard Attenborough's Closing the Ring (2007), as Shirley MacLaine falls out with daughter Neve Campbell at her husband's funeral and thinks back to a promise she had made in Northern Ireland during the Second World War.
The tensions between the generations also come to the fore in Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale (2008), when Catherine Deneuve reveals at a festive reunion that she needs a bone marrow transplant and hopes that one of her children or grandchildren can be her donor. Coming to terms with illness also dominates Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler (2008), as a heart attack forces Mickey Rourke to give up wrestling and take stock of a life that now contains ageing stripper Marisa Tomei. And, speaking of pugilism, seasoned boxers Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone enter the ring for one last showdown in Peter Berg's Grudge Match (2013).
After four decades alone in the Tennessee backwoods, Robert Duvall decides to hold a living funeral in Aaron Schneider's Get Low (2009) and invites along old friends including Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek to eulogise about him. Geologist Jim Broadbent and counselor Lesley Manville similarly reflect upon past and present as retirement beckons and they drift through the seasons with family and friends in Mike Leigh's Another Year (2010). We've tried to restrict our age limit to the over-60s, buy this one might just sneak under the barrier, along with Jules Williamson's Off the Rails (2021), which follows fiftysomethings Kelly Preston, Sally Phillips and Jenny Seagrove on a Blondie-themed trip to Mallorca to honour the memory of a lamented friend.
Secrets emerge during a night out when Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin collect Al Pacino from prison at the end of a 28-year sentence in Fisher Stevens's Stand Up Guys (2012), while the Icelandic siblings who haven't spoken in four decades are forced to break the silence when scrapie infects their flocks in Grimur Hákonarson's Rams (2015). For real gloweing animosity, however, you need to see Vanessa Redgrave making life hell for painter son Timothy Spall in Adrian Noble's Mrs Lowry and Son (2019).
Andrew Haigh's 45 Years (2015) suggests that you can be an item for decades without really knowing your partner, as Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay are just about to celebrate their 45th anniversary when he learns that the girlfriend who had been lost in an Alpine fall in 1962 has been found in melting ice and Rampling wonders if their marriage has been nothing more than meagre compensation. Rampling, however, is the girl who got left behind in Ritesh Batra's adaptation of Julian Barnes's novel, The Sense of an Ending (2017), which sees camera shop owner Jim Broadbent confront his past when he is bequeathed a diary written by a girlfriend from his student days at Cambridge.
Despite resting in a luxury resort in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth (2015), a refusal to go gentle into that good night prompts composer Michael Caine to plan a revival of his best-loved work, while film director pal Harvey Keitel tries to put together a new picture with his favourite actress, Jane Fonda. Ageing cowboy star Sam Elliott has no option but to accept a cancer diagnosis and focus on repairing a broken relationship with his daughter in Brett Haley's The Hero (2017). But the most heartbreaking recent display of irreversible decline was given by the Oscar-winning Anthony Hopkins in Florian Zeller's The Father (2020), as a fiercely independent old man comes to regret insisting that he can take care of himself and urging daughter Olivia Coleman to move to Paris.
Shaken into Life
When it comes to old age, one work towers above all others. Cinema Paradiso offers users eight different versions of William Shakespeare's King Lear, which are listed here by the actor in the title role: Jüri Järvet (Grigori Kozintsev, 1971); Paul Scofield (Peter Brook, 1971); Patrick Magee (Tony Davenall, 1974); Laurence Olivier (Michael Elliott, 1983); James Earl Jones (Edwin Sherin, 1984); Brian Blessed (self-directed, 1999); Ian McKellen (Trevor Nunn, 2008); and Don Warrington (Michael Buffong, 2016). No one else has that many landmark performances available to rent on high quality disc. But what do you expect of the UK's biggest DVD postal service?
The notion of ungrateful offspring has long been seized upon by film-makers, with four features in particular standing out. Paving the way is Leo McCarey's Make Way For Tomorrow (1937), which follows old marrieds Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi as they discover that their children are less than welcoming after the bank forecloses on their home during the Great Depression. Japanese couple Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama have a similar experience in Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), in which their disappointment at the way their children have turned out is offset by the kindness shown by their widowed daughter-in-law, Setsuko Hara.
This has rightly been hailed as one of the finest films ever made and there is no better introduction to subtitled cinema for those who feel intimidated by features in a foreign language. Unfortunately, it's not currently possible to see Giuseppe Tornatore's Stanno tutti bene (1990), which riffs on the same theme. But Cinema Paradiso can bring you Kirk Jones's remake, Everybody's Fine (2009), which casts Robert De Niro as the widower crossing the country in order to reconnect with the children who had failed to turn up at a planned family reunion. Elmar Wepper and Hannelore Elsner endure their own kind of Tokyo Story rejection in Doris Dörrie Cherry Blossoms (2008), only for the cross-dressing Wepper to find a unique way of fulfilling a promise to visit Mount Fuji with his late wife.
Atonement is a recurring theme in old age studies, with none being more fondly revered than Charles Dickens's tale of yuletide redemption. Alastair Sim is on peerless form as the miserly Victorian curmudgeon given a one-night makeover by a trio of festive spectres in Brian Desmond Hurst's Scrooge (1951). Also coming to the aid of underprivileged children is Takashi Shimura in Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952), as a civil servant diagnosed with cancer devotes his last days to raising funds for a Tokyo playground. However, it's the loss of his wife and children that haunts the eponymous character in Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker (1964), in which Rod Steiger gives a powerful performance as an Auschwitz survivor who is tormented by his memories while running a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem for gay pimp Brock Peters.
Another storyline that repeatedly crops up involves an ordered existence being thrown into disarray during old age. Professor Burt Lancaster's quiet life in Roman retirement is shaken up in Luchino Visconti's Conversation Piece (1974), for example, when he has to rent an upper room to vibrant countess Silvana Mangano and becomes acquainted with her eccentric friends and family. When his elderly employer dies, Chance the gardener (Peter Sellers) is mistaken for a sage after drifting into the orbit of Washington wheeler-dealer Melvyn Douglas and his wife, Shirley MacLaine in Hal Ashby's droll and deceptively sagacious Being There (1979).
Unexpected arrivals impact upon sheltered lives in our next two pictures. Much to the delight of Katharine Hepburn, husband Henry Fonda (both of whom would win Oscars) takes a shine to the grandson he's never seen after estranged daughter Jane Fonda leaves him in their quiet corner of New England in Mark Rydell's On Golden Pond (1981). More dramatically, it's a party of aliens from the planet Antaria who affect the wellbeing of Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley and Hume Cronyn in Ron Howard's Cocoon (1985) after the pensioners rediscover their zest for life on finding some curious pods at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Jessica Tandy, Maureen Stapleton and Gwen Verdon also perk up in the rejuvenating waters and siblings Lillian Gish and Bette Davis cease to feel their age in Lindsay Anderson's The Whales of August (1987), when Russian charmer Vincent Price turns up at the Maine cottage where the sisters have spent their late-life summers. Tandy would go on to become the oldest recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as the wealthy Jewish seventysomething who forms an attachment to her African American chauffer in 1940s Atlanta in Bruce Beresford's thoughtful adaptation of Alfred Uhry's Off-Broadway play, Driving Miss Daisy (1989).
Film extra Alan King makes life hell for heart surgeon son Billy Crystal until he falls ill in Henry Winkler's Memories of Me (1988), while veteran actor Peter O'Toole becomes enchanted by best friend Leslie Phillips's grand-niece, Jodie Whitaker, in Roger Michell's Venus (2006) that he sets out to give her a cultural education and, in the process, learns much about himself. Old Hollywood lighting expert Christopher Plummer also gets a boost out of helping a teenager with his school film project in Michael Schroeder's Man in the Chair (2007), while society columnist Kate Winslet befriends old-time screenwriter Eli Wallach after swapping houses with movie trailer producer Cameron Diaz in Nancy Meyers's The Holiday (2008).
Having been shipped off to the Twilight Years Rest Home by avaricious son Peter Capaldi, Pauline Collins leads a fight against the awful conditions in Ian Sharp's Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War (2002), while a bored Joan Plowwright slips out of her London nursing home after a chance encounter with aspiring writer Rupert Friend changes both of their lives in Dan Ireland's Mrs Palfrey At the Claremont (2005). The Cornish coast in 1936 provides the setting for Charles Dance's Ladies in Lavender (2004), in which sisters Judi Dench and Maggie Smith rescue castaway Daniel Brühl and discover that he's a talented musician. The same year has much more significance in Spain, as we discover in José Luis Cuerda's Butterfly's Tongue (1999), in which eight year-old Manuel Lozano dreads going to school in Galicia because he has been informed that elderly teacher Fernando Fernán Gómez will beat him. However, as civil war looms, the pair bond over a mutual fascination with insects.
Coming more up to date, Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski puts his prejudices behind him when the South-East Asian family that has moved in next door is targeted by a gang of bigots in Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino (2008). Michael Caine similarly takes the law into his own hands to clean up his London housing estate in Daniel Barber's Harry Brown (2009). But, while critics questioned the politics of this no-nonsense twosome, they purred over Hannes Holm's A Man Called Ove (2015), which reveals how grumpy Swede Rolf Lassgård is on the verge of giving up on life when an immigrant family moves into his street and forces him to rethink his attitudes and his ambitions.
When someone tries liquidate former CIA agent Bruce Willis, he reassembles his old team of Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman to see who is ruining his retirement in Robert Schwentke's Red (2010). Sparks of a less combustible kind start to fly when another old gang reassembles in Dustin Hoffmam's Quartet (2012). Musicians and lifelong friends Billy Connolly and Tom Courtenay live in the Beecham House retirement home, but when the latter's opera singer ex-wife (Maggie Smith) moves in, plans for the annual Verdi birthday concert start to unravel.
Music also proves the food of love in Paul Andrew Williams's Song For Marion (2012), as cantankerous Terence Stamp joins the local choir at the behest of wife Vanessa Redgrave and conductor Gemma Arterton helps him to rebuild his relationship with estranged son Christopher Eccleston. Taciturn teacher Michael Caine also rediscovers his joie de vivre while strolling around Paris with Clémence Poésy in Sandra Nettelbeck's Mr Morgan's Last Love (2013). But Caine can also be found down on a Texas farm with Robert Duvall, when Haley Joel Osment comes to live with his great uncles in Tim McCanlies's Secondhand Lions (2013).
Elderly farmer Lembit Ulfsak is an ethnic Estonian living in Abkhazia and his refusal to leave as war encroaches sees him become trapped between two opposing armies in Zaza Urushadze's Tangerines (2013). Wheelchair-bound Martin Landau sends old friend Christopher Plummer an envelope containing money and the whereabouts of the Auschwitz guard who had murdered their families in Atom Egoyan's Remember, which was released the same year as Simon Curtis's Woman in Gold (both 2015), which sees Jewish woman Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) team with lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to recover Gustav Klimt's 'Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer' from the Vienna gallery that had held it since it was stolen from Maria's family during the Holocaust.
In Michael McGowan's Still Mine (2012), 89 year-old James Cromwell faces a race to build a house in New Brunswick for dementia-afflicted wife Geneviève Bujold, while also dealing with jobsworthy government inspector Jonathan Potts. Painter Morgan Freeman and retired teacher Diane Keaton can no longer manage the stairs in their old building and start looking for a new apartment in Richard Loncraine's Ruth and Alex (aka Five Flights Up, 2014). Problems also arise in Ira Sachs's Love Is Strange (2014). when gay New Yorkers Alfred Molina and John Lithgow decide to get married after 39 years together. However, the announcement results in Molina losing his job as a music teacher at a Catholic school and the pair are forced to live apart because they can no longer afford their plush apartment.
Miss Shepherd (Maggie Smith) has no such worries about mortgage or rent hikes, as she parks her van on the drive of playwright Alan Bennett (Alex Jennings) and stays there for the next 15 years in Nicholas Hytner's The Lady and the Van (2015). By contrast, Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) has to swap her comfortable home for a prison cell after she is detained by MI5 in Trevor Nunn's Red Joan (2018) and charged with selling secrets to the KGB while studying in postwar Cambridge.
Proving that an old dog can learn new tricks, 70 year-old Robert De Niro gets to work as an intern at the online fashion start-up founded by the ambitious Anne Hathaway in Nancy Meyers's The Intern (2015). It takes a while for Imelda Staunton to get her bearings in Richard Loncraine's Finding Your Feet (2017) after she discovers her husband of 40 years has been having an affair with her best friend. However, she goes to stay with bohemian sister Celie Imrie, who introduces her to dance class pals Timothy Spall and Joanna Lumley. And there's more co-ordinated chaos in Zara Hayes's Poms (2019), as Diane Keaton moves into a retirement home and starts a cheerleading squad with fellow residents Jacki Weaver. Pam Grier and Rhea Perlman. What a shame this one is not currently on disc.
However, Cinema Paradiso user can accompany the Chinese-born, American-raised Akwafina, as returns to Changchun to visit the family matriarch who has no idea she only has a few weeks left to live in Lulu Wang's The Farewell (2019). The direction of travel is Asia to America in Lee Isaac Chung's Minari (2020), which saw Youn Yuh-jung become the first Korean to win an acting Oscar for her wonderful performance as the cursing grandma of a family trying to settle into the Ozarks in 1983.
Speaking of exceptional acting, dual Oscar winner Glenda Jackson makes a magnificent return after decades in politics in Aisling Walsh's Elizabeth Is Missing (2019), as a woman who is confronted by her sister's disappearance while searching for a missing friend. However, the sins of the past that Paul Hogan has to confront are less shocking, as the retired actor returns to the limelight in Dean Murphy's The Very Excellent Mr Dundee (2020) to try and polish up his reputation before being knighted by the Queen.
Once in a Lifetime
As people live longer and style gurus insist that 70 is the new 50, senior citizens have started to see retirement as a time for experience and adventure. Thus, while some take part-time jobs to make up their pension shortfalls or become free babysitters for their grandchildren, other OAPs are learning new skills and exploring new horizons.
In the case of Sybil Thorndike, Estelle Winwood and Kathleen Harrison, their fresh start in a secluded Irish village comes about more by luck than judgement in Cyril Frankel's Alive and Kicking (1955), as they escape their hated home and land on a remote island with a tall story about why they are residing in their new cottage. Oscar winner Geraldine Page plays another fugitive in Peter Masterson's The Trip to Bountiful (1985), as she gives her controlling son and daughter-in-law the slip to spend a bus trip back to her childhood home telling Rebecca De Mornay about her eventful life.
Poet Bruno Ganz leaves his home for the last time in Theo Angelopoulos's Eternity and a Day (1998) and is inspired by a letter from his late wife to take a journey to the places that hold significance for him. He opts for conventional modes of transport, however, unlike Richard Farnsworth, who crosses America to visit ailing brother Harry Dean Stanton on a John Deare lawnmower in David Lynch's sublimely brilliant snail's pace road movie, The Straight Story (1999).
Clint Eastwood's not the one to go quietly and he blasts off with fellow Team Daedalus astronauts James Garner, Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones in order to neutralise a rogue Soviet satellite in the self-directed Space Cowboys (2000). He has both feet firmly on the ground in being joined by daughter Amy Adams in Robert Lorenz's Trouble With the Curve (2012), as Eastwood's ageing baseball scout sets off on a last talent-spotting mission.
Jack Nicholson is another who prefers to rage against the light and he climbs into the driver's seat of a Winnebago motor home in an Oscar-nominated bid to prevent his daughter from marrying an unworthy waterbed salesman in Alexander Payne's About Schmidt (2002). However, Nicholson has a travelling companion in Rob Reiner's The Bucket List (2007), as his world-weary billionaire meets mechanic Morgan Freeman in a hospital room and agrees to embark upon a road trip to tick off the things they have always wanted to do before kicking the bucket.
Retired actress Julie Walters proves equally spontaneous in Jeremy Brock's Driving Lessons (2006), as she hires directionless teenager Rupert Grint to chauffeur her to Edinburgh to give a poetry reading. Walters is one of the few national treasures not to check into John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), an adaptation of Deborah Moggach's novel, These Foolish Things, which follows Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton and Ronald Pickup to a retirement resort in India. They are joined by Americans Richard Gere and David Strathairn in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), which relied on an original script by Ol Parker and inspired four series of the BBC celebrity travelogue, The Real Marigold Hotel (2016-18).
The destination is Iceland in Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens's Land Ho! (2014), as retired surgeon Earl Lynn Nelson talks former brother-in-law Paul Eenhoorn into a trek to the frozen north. Old buddies Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and Michael Douglas take a safer option, as they head into the Nevada desert for a final flirtation with fate in Jon Turteltaub's Last Vegas. And Bruce Dern is convinced that his luck is in when he coerces son Will Forte into ferrying him hundreds of miles to collect a million dollar sweepstake prize in Alexander Payne's monochrome gem, Nebraska (both 2013), which earned Dern the Best Actor prize at Cannes.
Following the death of her beloved dog, widowed singer Blythe Danner vows to make the most of the time left to her, only to find herself torn between Sam Elliot and Martin Starr in Brett Haley's I'll See You in My Dreams (2015). While Danner hits all the right notes, the same can't be said for Meryl Streep in Stephen Frears's Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), as a sixtysomething socialiste in 1940s New York ploughs on with her preparations for a solo concert even though supportive manager/husband St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant) and sceptical accompanist Cosmé McMoon (Simon Helberg) know she can't hold a tune.
Travel writer Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) defies the advice of his wife (Emma Thompson) and sets out to walk the Appalachian Trail in Ken Kwapis's A Walk in the Woods (2015). But it's the Scottish Highlands that beckon widow Sheila Hancock in Simon Hunter's Edie (2017), as the embittered eightysomething strikes out on a hike to prove she is still capable of looking after herself.
Similarly refusing to do as they're told, Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren leave their demanding children behind in Paolo Virzi's The Leisure Seeker and drive down to Florida in the old RV they had used for family holidays in the 1970s. A remembrance of things past prompts faded film star Joan Collins to do a bunk from her London nursing home and persuade browbeaten housewife Pauline Collins into helping her reach a French island for an old lover's funeral in Roger Goldby's The Time of Their Lives (both 2017).
The prospect of her encroaching demise persuades octagenarian Shirley MacLaine to commission her own obituary in Mark Pellington's The Last Word (2017). When she discovers that no one has a good thing to say about her, however, she enlists the help of journalist Amanda Seyfried to try and burnish her reputation by righting some wrongs. MacLaine's widow is less concerned with morality in Andy Tennant's Wild Oats, when the insurance company sends her a cheque for $5 million instead of $50,000 and she whisks best friend Jessica Lange off on a trip to Spain. Venice is the destination for widower Nick Nolte and granddaughter Sophia Lane Nolte in Til Schweiger's Head Full of Honey (both 2018), as they return to the places where he met his beloved wife before Alzheimer's can rob him of his memories.
Late-Life Love
There's always something poignant about romance in later life. The odd film has centred on devoted couples who have spent decades together, but the majority chart burgeoning relationships between strangers who had not been expecting to love again after being married and bereaved. Of course, there is always the exception to the rule, as in the case of 'Le Masque', an episode in Le Plaisir (1951), Max Ophuls's anthology of tales taken from the writings of Guy de Maupassant, which exposes the ageing dandy who has been hiding his face behind a mask in order to seduce unsuspecting women.
Much more wholesome is Richard Lester's Robin and Marian (1976), which sees Robin Hood (Sean Connery) renewing acquaintance with Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn) on returning to Sherwood Forest from the Crusades. The cosiness of their connection in the face of danger is echoed in Jimmy Murakami's When the Wind Blows (1986), in which John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft voice the pensioners suffering the after-effects of a nuclear blast. Less harrowing is another animated take on a Raymond Briggs tome, Roger Mainwood's Ethel & Ernest (2016), which boasts a song by Paul McCartney, who had worked with Richard Lester on the Beatle duo of A Hard Day's Night (1964), Help! (1965) and the concert documentary, Get Back (1991).
Pittsburgh widows Ellen Burstyn, Olympia Dukakis and Diane Ladd have got into the habit of hitting the local deli after visiting their husbands' graves in Bill Duke's The Cemetery Club (1993), which takes an unexpected turn when ex-cop Danny Aiello takes a shine to Burstyn. When their wives die on the same day, ex-RAF pilot Albert Finney befriends milkman Tom Courtenay (who won a BAFTA for his performance) in Paul Seed's A Rather English Marriage (1998), with the latter keeping discreet tabs on his new pal's romance with gold-digging boutique owner Joanna Lumley.
Having not always been a faithful husband, critic John Bayley (Jim Broadbent) finds it tough caring for novelist Iris Murdoch (Judi Dench) when she succumbs to dementia in Richard Eyre's Iris (2001). By contrast, loyal spouse Gordon Pinsent has come to terms with the fact that wife Julie Christie has become attached to Michael Murphy in the home where she's being treated for Alzheimer's in Sarah Polley's Away from Her (2007), an adaptation of Alice Munro's short story, 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain' that received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and Adapted Screenplay.
Equally heartbreaking is Michael Haneke's Amour (2012), which centres on the anguishing decisions taken by Jean-Louis Trintignant to prevent his music teacher wife from suffering after she has a stroke. In addition to earning an Oscar nomination, Emmanuelle Riva also became the oldest ever winner of a BAFTA for her deeply moving performance. There's a happier ending (sort of) to Nicholas Fackler's Lovely, Still (2008), which begins around Christmas with grocery store clerk Martin Landau finding Ellen Burstyn on his doorstep when he comes home from work.
On finding a 50 year-old letter at Juliet's wall in Verona, Amanda Seyfried joins Vanessa Redgrave on a journey to find her lost love in Gary Winick's Letters to Juliet (2010) and there's also a literary subtext to Jake Schreier's Robot & Frank (2012), as retired cat burglar Frank Langella attempts to charm librarian Susan Sarandon with the help of the robot humanoid (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) purchased for him by his son.
Widower Christopher Plummer learns to love again after moving into a new apartment block and meeting Shirley MacLaine in Michael Radford's Elsa & Fred (2014), which is a remake of Argentine Marcos Carnevale's 2005 film of the same name. Lodgings also have their part to play in Israel Horovitz's My Old Lady (2014), as Kevin Kline inherits an apartment in Paris when his father dies, only to discover that it's occupied by Maggie Smith, who is entitled under French law to tenure and a occupancy fee until she dies. Fortunately for the New Yorker, the presence of Smith's daughter, Kristin Scott Thomas makes the stressful impasse more tolerable.
Just as they had done in John Madden's Mrs Brown (1997) - when Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) had formed an attachment to Scottish gillie John Brown (Billy Connolly) - tongues start wagging at court in Stephen Frears's Victoria & Abdul (2017) when Her Majesty (Dench again) places her unwavering trust in servant Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), whom she nicknamed 'the Munshi'. Fact (albeit of a less momentous kind) also underpins Joel Hopkins's Hampstead (2017), as American widow Diane Keaton falls for Brendan Gleeson, who is living off the grid on the nearby heath.
The location is considerably more exotic in Ron Shelton's Just Getting Started (2017), as Morgan Freeman's spot as top dog at the Villa Capri is challenged when ex-soldier Tommy Lee Jones checks in and starts competing for the attentions of Rene Russo. Frustratingly, it's not possible to bring you Ritesh Batra's Our Souls At Night (2017), which sees small towners Jane Fonda and Robert Redford become friends under the scrutiny of the judgemental neighbours. But Cinema Paradiso users can revel in Fonda at her best in Bill Holderman's Book Club (2018), as she and prim pals Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen get a shock when their reading circle decides to tackle E.L. James's erotic bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey - which was filmed by Sam Taylor-Johnson in 2015 and later saw Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan reprise the roles of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey in James Foley's Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and Fifty Shades Freed (2018).
Late-life love stories centring on LGBTQ+ characters are fewer and further between and the contrast between Mike Mills's Beginners (2010) - in which Ewan McGregor comes to terms with the fact that widowed father Christopher Plummer has come out - and Bruce La Bruce's Gerontophilia (2013) - in which a gay man with a thing for senior citizens gets a job in a care home - couldn't be more different. On the less contentious side is Paul Weitz's Grandma (2015), which sees Lily Tomlin get over a break-up with her girlfriend by helping granddaughter Julia Garner find the $600 she needs to raise before sundown.
