Week-End with Father

New York's Grand Central Station is full of children going away to summer camp. Among those present are widower Van Heflin (as Brad Stubbs) with his two girls, and widow Patricia Neal (as Jean Bowen) with her two boys. The previously unacquainted adults meet at the station while sending their twosomes away from home for the first time. You should have no trouble figuring out the basic storyline. The girls are real-life sisters Gigi Perreau (as Anne Stubbs) and Janine Perreau (as Patty Stubbs). The boys are Jimmy Hunt (as Garrett "Gary" Bowen) and Tommy Rettig (as David "Shorty" Bowen)...

During the "father-son" athletic competition, young Hunt sustained an injury and "little brother" Rettig found his role expanded. In some scenes, Hunt can be seen with his left arm held still or concealed...

This sort of story reached its madcap peak with "Yours, Mine and Ours" (1968). The adult romance is unexciting, but there is fun watching their rivals. Television star Virginia Field (as Phyllis Reynolds) also wants to wed Mr. Heflin, and muscular camp counselor Richard Denning (as Don Adams) desires Ms. Neal. As the co-stars hired "help", Frances E. Williams and Elvia Allman are amusing. Heflin and the children benefit particularly well from Douglas Sirk's capable direction. Playing a ten-year-old with nail polish and a toothy boyfriend, Gary Pagett (as Eddie), young Gigi is especially enchanting.

****** Week-End with Father (12/51) Douglas Sirk ~ Van Heflin, Patricia Neal, Gigi Perreau, Tommy Rettig

In a Sirk film nothing is quite as it seems. Am I alone in finding rather more going on here under the surface, than might have been expected from a 'family fun' B-picture?

As we'd expect from Sirk, everything is kept tight, the actors take their chances well - not least the two, far from stereotyped house servants, played by Frances E. Williams and Elvia Allman - and there is plenty of genuinely funny comedy, primarily some well-timed phyiscal slapstick from Van Heflin.

Underneath the predictable family ingredients, there is some slightly less genial critique of middle-class American life and love going on. The mockery of Richard Denning's vegan 'Tarzan' character is sustained and trenchant, as is the far from flattering portrait of Virginia Field's careerist TV personality - women, it seems have to know their place in America's safe but stuffy 1950s society.

Yet the ironies are multiplied by the awful emotional ineptness of the two main characters - their idea of how to break the news of their engagement to their children would have seemed as horrific then as now. The 'fun' of American camp life, one step away from natural disaster, sends shivers down the spine. And at the climax, the still moment where Heflin's elder daughter (Gigi Perreau) gives her infantile father a lesson in emotional intelligence comes as a touching tension breaker - this is the first time we've seen any of the characters react or behave in a 'responsible' way. And it takes a child to get the adult to see the truth.

Perhaps I am alone, but I found Sirk's multi-layered social comedy fascinating, like peeling a workaday onion to find a diamond at its heart.

Perhaps the only Sirk movie which was aimed at the children's market ; the grown -up children would play an important part in his canon ;and they would often become selfish and even cruel when they grew up;in "all that Heaven allows" , they buy Jane Wyman a TV set so she will have the whole world in her hand and not marry the undistinguished uneducated gardener; in "there's always tomorrow" and "All I desire",children epitomize "adult moral" and keep their elders on the straight and narrow;"they keep the adults in the cages which society has prepared for them"(Sirk);in "imitation of life" a daughter disowns her mom because she wants to pass off as white and it leads to tragedy.

Already, in "week-end" ,children impose their vision , models provided by the society: the girls dream of movie stardom ,so a glamorous TV star is more attractive than a simple mother of two ; as for the boys ,virility is represented by beefcake counselor Don : what can oafish Van Heflin do against this dynamic superman? In spite of his unbearable self-assurance ,one can note that Don is ahead of his time,as far as health food is concerned : the future would prove him right.

Sirk's movie is thoroughly enjoyable and more meaningful than it may appear at first sight: when Brad boasts about his prowess as a boy scout, the boy removes the markers ;it becomes symbolic: their would be future parents take the wrong way ,whereas they think they are on the right way,they do not have to heed their own children's call .

The more Brad tries to resemble his children's model,the more he fails : during the sports contest , Van helflin loses on all accounts ;the girls discover that their icon is in love with herself , only interested in the autographs she signs and in her stardom ;she's a career-woman where children have no room.

And do not miss the ironical final slap at the so-called he-man.

"Week-End with Father" is very much in the same tradition as the film "Yours, Mine and Ours" as well as the show "The Brady Bunch"...especially the earlier episodes where the two families learn to care for each other.

Brad Stubbs (Van Heflin) and Jean Bowen (Patricia Neal) are both widowed with two children each. They meet just after dropping off their kids at summer camp...and soon they fall in love. But, when they come to pick up the kids and inform them that they're now about to become a blended family, things naturally don't go well. Is the upcoming marriage doomed....especially with Brad's AND Jean's exs being around as well and the kids hating their future parent?

I think the subject matter of this film could have been handled much better had the film relied less on sit-com style humor and instead dealt more with the realistic problems such a situation might entail. Additionally, having the parents both spring this on the kids like they did seemed really stupid...no wonder there were problems! Overall, while I like Van Heflin, the film is just a dopey time-passer and it could have been a lot more.

By the way, in an interesting bit of casting the two little girls are played by real life sisters, Gigi and Janine Perreau.

One of the best things about this movie is the girl who plays Van Heflin's oldest daughter in the film. She asks her father's girlfriend for a tube of lipstick, and he's shocked. The little girl has already told her father that she has a boyfriend, and now this. She plainly explains to dad that she's going to give it to a TV star that has come up to the camping resort so the star can write her autograph. The father sits back relieved, as his girlfriend (Patricia Neal) gives him a sympathetic look. The little girl skips away, but not before informing her father that the color of the lipstick is not her shade, anyway.

Richard Denning also has a good role as a health nut who has designs on Patricia Neal's character. She has two sons, neither of which wants their mother to marry Denning and be subjected to a life of tofu and bean sprouts. This is a good family film for all.