According to an article posted on TCMs “On Borrowed Time” page, this 1939 movie, starring Lionel Barrymore, goes back to Chaucer and a story he wrote called “The Pardoner’s Tale”, which itself was part of his celebrated “The Canterbury Tales.”
To their credit, the makers of OBT point this fact out before we see a single frame of the actual film. The credits also reveal that, most recently, OBT found its inspiration in a play by Paul Osborn, also called, “On Borrowed Time”, which was, itself, based on a novel by Lawrence Edward Watkin, called, yes, you guessed it, “On Borrowed Time.”
Death, in the form of a dignified English gentleman named Mr. Brink (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), has come for wheelchair bound Gramps/Julian Northrup (Lionel Barrymore). Trouble is, Gramps/Northrup doesn’t want to go. It’s not that he’s afraid of dying, it’s just that he’s devoted to his grandson Pud (Bobs Watson) and determined to protect him from his evil Aunt Demetria, who is drooling at the prospect of adopting the boy and his $55,000 inheritance.
Solution? With a little bit of magic, Gramps/Northrup turns his beloved apple tree into a prison for anyone who climbs it. That anyone becomes Mr. Brink, after Gramps/Nortrup’s requests one last delicious apple before he goes.
A heart tugger, if there ever was one, OBT takes its sweet time getting to its central premise and, once there, takes its sweet time unravelling all of its complications. The slow pace is not all bad, as we get to delight in Barrymore’s pre-Potter turn as Gramps/Northrup, an equally cantankerous, but, in this case, ultimately kind-hearted old geezer.
Eily Maylon, as Aunt Demetria Riffle, who could give the Wicked Witch of the West the creeps, is terrific as Gramps and Pud’s enemy #1. She gives as good as she gets in a performance that is all stiff, stuffy and humourless. In many ways, she is worse than Mr. Brink. He may be Death, but she’s the death of kindness, the death of fun and, in one particularly funny moment, the death of manhood.
Later in the film, just as it looks like everything is going to be resolved in a peaceful and polite manner, Aunt Demetria bungles it all up by revealing that, once Gramps/Northrup is out of the way, she’s going to put Pud in an all girls school. The horror!!! Gramps/Northrup’s reaction is hilarious – it’s as if she’s just told him she’s going to sign him up to the Hitler Youth. Things were different back then.
Overlong, even at a slim 99 minutes, OBT is a family film that deals with death in a surprisingly straightforward way. Yes, the plot may be total fantasy, but death isn’t seen as spooky, so much as a natural part of living out one’s life. There’s nothing to fear, the film seems to suggest. In fact, it says, to many – particularly the elderly and sick – it is a kind of relief.
In December of 2020, my mother slipped away due to complications from Alzheimer’s. She was 84. In that awful moment, death, for her, did seem to be more friend than foe; a kind and gentle presence that freed her from a prison of unimaginable cruelty. She was a wonderful mother and a great woman and I miss her terribly.
We could all benefit a bit from seeing the end as OBT wants us to see it.
