I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER

US, 1970, 92 minutes, Colour.
Melvyn Douglas, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Dorothy Stickney.
Directed by Gilbert Gates.

I Never Sang For My Father is based on a successful play by Robert Anderson. Its theme is ageing, family relationships and love and children's responsibility to parents. The film is realistic, almost embarrassingly so in its visualising of family problems and in its strong dialogue of self-centred demands and family quarrels.

Tom Garrison, as played marvellously by Melvyn Douglas, is a strong-willed, vital 80 years old man who has made something of himself, although it is based on resentment of his father. He clutches at his own son, Gene, a widower, and cannot bear to let him go.

Events come to a head when Mrs Garrison dies and Alice, the daughter banished by her father when she married a Jew, comes back for the funeral. She brings things to a head but Gene backs out of leaving his father. It is only when his fiancee, Shirley, a doctor from California, comes visiting that father and son communicate and then clash, with sad results. The film opens with a statement by Gene that death ends a life but doesn't end a relationship which lives on, affecting the survivor. Melvyn Douglas (who won an Oscar for his wonderful portrayal of an old man of principle in Hud) was nominated for an Oscar for the Best Actor of the Year (1970) for this role. He is excellent; so, also, is Gene Hackman who emerged from films like Bonnie and Clyde, The Gypsy Moths, Marooned and Downhill Racer as a solid character actor. This is a fine film.

1. A moving film? Deeply?
2. How is the theme of aging and admitting and adjusting to old age handled?

3. Insight into the way elderly people think and react?

4. What kind of a man was Tom Garrison? Why did everyone call him a great man? What did he have to look back on at 80?

5. Why did he hate his father? Was he justified? Why did he bring him oranges before he died?

6. How did hatred of his father affect him in his growing up, sense of responsibility and ambitions?

7. Why did Tom tell his life story so much in his old age? How self-centred was he (even on the occasion of his wife's death)?

8. What kind of a man was Gene? Why was he so devoted to his father? What irritated him in his father?

9. What kind of a woman was Afro, Garrison? Was she prepared to let go of Gene and let him marry and settle in California? Why did his father use his mother to hold on to him?

10. Why did Gene seek consolation from his woman friend?

11. How well did Gene and his sister love each other?

12. Why had Tom Garrison banished his daughter? Did he treat her well at the funeral?

13. Was she too hard on her father and on Gene when she tried to persuade him to have help and to let go of Gene? Were her ideas right?

14. What responsibility do children have for their parents?

15. What kind of a woman was Shirley? How do we know she loved Gene?

16. What was the purpose of the visit to the old people's home and the hospital? How did they impress?

17. Why did Gene and his father really communicate in the father's bedroom after they looked at his parents' photos and the old man broke down?

18. When the old man felt threatened and accused Gene of selfishness and ingratitude in not wanting to stay and live in the house?

19. Did Gene do the right thing in leaving his father and seeing him only occasionally over the years until he died? flow did you feel about this when Gene described it?

20. What was the meaning of the theme at the beginning and end that death ends a life but does not break a relationship that lives on and affects the survivor?