I Never Sang for My Father

I Never Sang for My Father; drama, USA, 1970; D: Gilbert Cates, S: Gene Hackman, Melvyn Douglas, Estelle Parsons, Dorothy Stickney, Elizabeth Hubbard

Gene Garrison, a college professor, picks up his parents, Tom and Margaret, at the airport after they came back a vacation. Gene's wife died, but he met a new woman, Peggy, yet is reluctant to move with her to California because he doesn't want to abandon his parents. When Margaret dies from a heart attack, Tom could be left alone in the house. Gene's sister, Alice, who was banished by dad for marrying a Jew, returns for the funeral and recommends to get a housemaid for Tom, but he refuses. Gene is torn between going with Peggy and staying to take care of his father, who is of failing health. Tom tells him he hated his alcoholic father who left him and his mother. After an argument, Gene leaves the house for good. Gene narrates how Tom died later.

Even though it was critically acclaimed during its premiere, Gilbert Cates' father-son relationship drama "I Never Sang for My Father" is today rather dated, tripping too much over melodrama and too sappy excess. It works due to the strong, dedicated and committed performances of veteran actors, the excellent Gene Hackman and Melvyn Douglas, who keep the movie going in spite of itself. The overlong, ponderous or heavy-handed dialogues reveal that the movie works only on one level, its theme, yet has nothing else going for it. Hackman's character Gene seems to have found himself in the son role from his later own movie "The Royal Tenenbaums", since Douglas' character of the grumpy dad Tom is truly difficult, though in a much more tragic edition here. Among other, Tom is constantly nagging Gene, telling him that he mumbles too much and cannot understand him; or that he didn't want to allow his late father to attend his late mother's funeral, prompting Margaret to comment: "Can you imagine going around telling everyone how he shoved his father off the funeral coach?" Gene even confesses to his sister: "Everytime I see him like this alseep, the old tiger, the old man, my father... And then he wakes up and becomes Tom Garrison, and I'm in a lot of trouble." It also contemplates the problem of taking care of old parents, who become a burden to their children, similarly like "Make Way for Tomorrow". However, humanity and emotions aside, there is not enough to conjure up some broader cinematic versatility, since the director stopped at just being solid, and nothing more. 

Grade:++