On Borrowed Time

Little Pud loses his parents and is left with his elderly grandparents. The boy and his grandfather become inseparable. Gramps worries that if anything happens to him the child will go to a scheming relative who wants custody. Then a man called Mr Brink arrives; he is an agent of Death and he has come for Gramps. By a trick, Gramps traps him in the apple tree in the garden. Harold S. Bucquet's MGM picture is adapted from Paul Osborn's play. Death being stuck up a tree starts as a comic idea, but the consequences turn heavy at once: nobody in the world can die any more, and creatures in pain cannot be released. Lionel Barrymore plays Gramps and Cedric Hardwicke plays Mr Brink. The film looks like a children's tale and thinks about why death is necessary.