Women of a Certain Age

Film: Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

This is going to be tough. Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams is a short movie about a woman’s mid-life crisis. That’s not an immediate deal breaker for me, although I admit that it’s hardly a step in the correct direction. More specifically, this is about the mid-life crisis of the sort of woman whose life appears to be entirely about herself. Her children are grown, her husband is kind of a stranger, and she is suddenly emotionally adrift.

The mid-life crisis genre isn’t necessarily one that I dislike. In fact, there have been movies like Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine that come from almost the same place as Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams that I have liked quite a bit. No, the issue here isn’t the story, but the character. Rita Walden (Joanne Woodward) is an awful, self-absorbed woman who clearly isn’t worth the 87-minute running time of the film.

You Don't Pick Your Parents

Film: I Never Sang for My Father
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Lots of people have a strained relationship with one or both parents. Because of this family stories are fertile ground for drama. I suspected from the title I Never Sang for My Father that we’d be heading in that direction here, and I wasn’t wrong. This film explores the relationship between father and son, primarily from the son’s perspective, and it does so beautifully.

Gene Garrison (Gene Hackman) is a college professor whose wife has recently died. We find him in the airport waiting to great his parents on their return from Florida. We also learn virtually everything we need to know about their relationships when his parents get off the plane. Gene’s father Tom (Melvyn Douglas) is a man who is the very definition of self-made. He thinks highly of himself and a lot less of everyone else, including Gene. His mind is also starting to go a bit; moved forward to a more modern setting, and Tom Garrison would be in the early to middle stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Gene’s mother Margaret (Dorothy Stickney) is physically frail, having survived a heart attack, but mentally strong.