Week-End with Father

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.

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.

Often-told tale of a single father meeting and falling in love with a single mother, planning to wed despite the fact their mutual children do not get along. Van Heflin and Patricia Neal are certainly well-matched in the leads, and Heflin in particular gives a sharply-observed performance, but contrivances take over Joseph Hoffman's script and the whole pre-sitcom venture soon runs aground. Nice opening, several very good scenes, but ultimately nothing special. Aimed at wholesome family audiences of the 1950s (who may have felt TV's "The Brady Bunch" some 18 years later was but a retread), this passes muster as nostalgia, but it isn't a memorable vehicle for either star. ** from ****

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

Weekend With Father has Van Heflin as a widower father with two small girls Gigi and Janine Perreau who meets war widow Patricia Neal sending her boys Tommy Rettig and Jimmy Hunt off to the adjoining summer camp that Heflin is sending his kids. As things happen in the movies Van and Pat fall for each other and decide getting married could solve a lot of needs. That is if the kids will accept these chosen step parents.

There's also another complication. Heflin is a TV producer and TV star Virginia Field has matrimony in mind for herself. As for Neal the head counselor at her boy's camp is Richard Denning who thinks he's God's gift to the female species and spends the whole picture with his shirt off impressing the ladies. He's got in mind to impress Neal and show up Heflin who as he puts it was an Eagle Scout, but earned it in Central Park.

Some of Heflin's efforts at outdoor activities were clearly borrowed from Cary Grant/Myrna Loy comedy The Bachelor And The Bobby Soxer. I believe this is Heflin's only screen comic part and he puts in a good effort. As does Neal and the rest of the cast. I have to say among the supporting players Denning as this blow-hard camp counselor borrows a bit from the Jack Carson school of blow-hard and it shows well.

Weekend With Father holds up nicely after over 60 years and it's good family entertainment.