The Gift

"The Gift" is a made for television movie I found on YouTube. And, after watching it, I am left thinking that the film was okay...it had some really nice acting...but not much more.

The story is set during the early 1950s when the US was still at war in Korea. Pete (Gary Frank) is home on leave from the navy for Christmas and hopes to spend some time with his girlfriend and his family. But there are problems with both....the girlfriend has a new boyfriend and Pete's father (Glenn Ford) is a drunk who never really talks to his family. The dad avoids his feelings and his closest connections are to the other drunks down at the local hangouts. How all this works out through the course of the story is the apparent point of the film.

As I mentioned above, the acting is quite good. But the story is hindered by the general lack of likability of the characters and I felt curiously uninvolved as a result. Well made....jut not all that compelling.

In The Gift, Gary Frank plays a teenager coming home from boot camp before getting sent off to Korea. He expects a loving family to support him and a girlfriend to wait faithfully. Instead, he finds his girlfriend has dumped him for a street thug and his dad, Glenn Ford, barely even speaks to him. His mom, Julie Harris, constantly does damage control, but when he wants his dad's love and approval, nothing she says can help.

Even though he seems mean at the start of the movie, Glenn gives a very good performance. He's a tough Irishman who sings songs at the bar and gets excited about sports, but he only has one leg and is still extremely upset about it. Julie maintains that he was loving and sweet before the amputation, but Gary has never heard the story of what happened to his father, so it's hard for him to understand. When Glenn finally breaks down and tells him, there isn't a dry eye in the house. This tv movie isn't great, but watching Glenn makes it worthwhile. In his youth, Glenn was put in comedies, westerns, and everyman roles, with very little emotional acting required. The Gift shows that had he been called upon to cry, he could have delivered in every film. It's easy to imagine him as George Bailey after this movie. Well done, Glenn.

A simple story. Yes, sentimental but not so much as has been produced in more recent times from American studios, where sex and sentimentality is routinely shoved in your face. Both of the main male actors were very good with Glenn Ford playing out of character and with an excellent Irish accent.

Director Don Taylor should be given credit for keeping a rather uneventful flick interesting. To that end, he relies on some very solid acting from Julie Harris, in a small but eye-catching and sensitive part; the ever reliable Glenn Ford in the sunset of his career; and a highly naturalistic performance from Gary Frank.

The Irish brogue and sharp dialogue help, as does the typical TV photography of the 1970s, everything done with unassuming intelligence.

In the end, family amounts to the loftiest value of all, and Navy soldier Frank's short Xmas visit ultimately yields him gifts in terms of family relations that remind one how precious loved ones really are, their moods and unpleasant personal traits notwithstanding.

Interesting that Frank's other Xmas gift was to call it a day with his cheating girlfriend: self-respect is as important as family.

A couple of minuses: the photos showing Ford's soccer prowess are unconvincing because it looks like his face was grafted onto some player's body and the "gift" that his right leg was is tough to imagine, because all you see is him heading the ball.

Those minor letdowns aside, I found THE GIFT eminently watchable.

The Gift is a film set in the 50s in Brooklyn just as the Korean War is going. The reference is to 1952-53 because father and son Glenn Ford and Gary Frank discuss the recent presidential election where Frank expresses surprise that his father voted for Ike. Quite a few Democrats did even in Democratic Brooklyn.

But politic isn't all that divides the father and son. Ford is a man with one leg and it wasn't a war injury that did it. He drinks a lot and just won't talk about his feelings. Frank who is on leave from the navy would like to get closer to his father, but Ford is stoic and proud and puts up an emotional barrier.

Julie Harris plays the mother and referee between the two. Later on its revealed the reason for the amputation and that is what really rocks Frank's world. No wonder Ford is such a bitter man.

The Gift reconstructs 50s Brooklyn that I remember as a kid. There's a nice soundtrack of period music that's part of The Gift. There's also a good performance by an as yet unknown Kevin Bacon as a younger and stupider son of Ford and Harris.

What is The Gift? All I'll say is that if you treasure it forever it will keep on giving.