University of Virginia Library

Core Of Film

The women's parts are all played
rather innocuously by Dorothy
Stickney, Estelle Parsons, Elizabeth
Hubbard, and Lovelady Powell, but
then they aren't that important, for
when the trappings are stripped
away, it is the performances of
Mssrs. Hackman and Douglas which
are at the core of the film and
which, perhaps more than anything
else, are responsible for putting you
through an emotional wringer.

There are those, to be sure, who
will dismiss "I Never Sang For My
Father" as pure schmaltz. But I
suspect those who do will be people
who lack the maturity and the
sensitivity to appreciate the role of
love in human existence, the need
for its presence and the lonely pain
of its absence.

(Now at the University)