Gene Hackman Movie:

I Never Sang for My Father Reviews:
Excellent Movie
2009-08-29 - I had looked for this movie for more than 20 years and was finally able to get my own copy. Melvyn Douglas and Gene Hackman are superb. It arrived in a timely fashion and is in excellent shape. I've watched it at least three times since I've had it.

Heartbreakingly honest
2008-12-30 - As I discovered only this year, you won't & can't truly appreciate the emotional impact of this film until losing your own father. It's only then that the brilliant performances & piercing insights, which you might have felt intellectually & emotionally, strike home at a visceral level.

Which isn't to say that such a loss is required before viewing. Far from it! While this is clearly a universal story, it's told with very specific characters. You come to know & understand them in the course of the film: their motivations, their hopes & wounds, their entirely human need to somehow connect with one another, to allow their genuine love to overcome the obstacles of time & history.

In a way, this is a fascinating companion film to something like "Field of Dreams." In that lovely fantasy, the father & son reconciliation that so many seek actually happens, transcending death itself. In "I Never Sang For My Father," we're presented with the more painful reality, the knowledge that for all our best intentions & effort, so much goes unsaid, undone, until it's too late. And perhaps some wounds can never be completely healed.

While the entire cast is superb, it's Gene Hackman & Melvyn Douglas who carry the emotional weight of the film. Not only is the dialogue keen & poignant, but the subtle facial expressions & body language of the actors make that dialogue all the more powerful.

Dated? Not in the least. It's been the same story since the dawn of time, and it never seems to change, no matter how much cultures & societies & fashions change. I don't think you'll find a stronger telling of this inescapable narrative anywhere; and you won't soon forget it after the final credits roll.

So all that remains now is a DVD release of this neglected, deeply moving film. Commentary would be a nice extra, but it's not a necessity -- this is one film that speaks for itself, saying all that has to be said ... and much that inevitably goes unsaid. Most highly recommended!

Life with Father
2008-09-07 - I watched "I Never Sang for my Father" for the first time today and it surprized me that I hadn't seen it before. This is an excellent movie that deals with a real issue in many families. The issue is adult father/son relationships and how individuals involved handle their changing roles. The roles don't need to transpose themselves although this sometimes happens as parents reach advanced age. What ideally needs to happen is that love and respect would mature along with father and son. In this way authority would evolve into encouragement and instructions evolve into advice while obedience evolves into support and responsibility becomes second nature. This is NOT the relationship we find in "I Never Sang for my Father". The father (Melvin Douglas) is a domineering man whose life is focussed around himself. An important aspect of the movie is understanding the father's relationship with his own father (or lack thereof). The son (Gene Hackman) knows their relationship has always been one-sided but is willing to try to do the right thing.

The movie is a powerful drama that examines their relationship. Something cannot be broken if it was never whole and that seems to be the biggest stumbling block. The two outstanding preformances are supplemented by the roles of the mother/wife and sister/daughter. This is not a happy movie but it is an essential movie written, apparently, by a man who understood what he was writing about.

Why is this great movie not out on DVD?!!!
2007-07-09 - I saw this movie in the Mercury theater in Middleburg Heights, Ohio in 1970 when it was first released. It was the first movie I ever saw that featured Gene Hackman, and I was just blown away. His performance as a somewhat estranged son to Melvyn Douglas's character was riveting. Melvyn Douglas, in an equally powerful performance, played a recently widowed man who is forced to cope with his two grown children, played by Hackman and Estelle Parsons. To make a long story short, it is a story of two men, father and son, who never connected, of parental expectations not fulfilled and a relationship, finally, iretrievably broken. It will, literally, bring you to tears.

See it for the performances
2007-06-18 - I had to give it four stars because in truth INSFMF is somewhat haphazardly directed, but the acting is out of this world. Melvin Douglas is watchable in just about anything, but he really gives one astounding performance here, as do the rest of the cast.

The film rather unflinchingly looks at a strained father & son relationship brought to a head by the mother's death and fathers advancing senility. I think the script does a good job of showing how both parents and children are profoundly flawed in their understanding of each other, and provides no easy answers as to what "the right thing to do" is when human frailty requires tough choices.