TNT’s ‘The Wool Cap’ with William H. Macy a superior remake

The last time William H. Macy teamed with Steven Schacter – for the film “Door to Door” – Macy won an Emmy for Best Actor in a telemovie, Schacter won for Best Director and they both won Emmys for co-writing it.

With that kind of track record, the two could do just about anything they wanted for their next TNT project.

What they wanted to do, for whatever reason, was remake a somewhat obscure 1962 movie written by and starring another actor, Jackie Gleason. That movie was “Gigot,” and Gleason starred as a mute building caretaker in Paris’ Montmartre who befriends the daughter of a dying prostitute.

On Sunday at 8 p.m., TNT presents Macy in “The Wool Cap,” an Americanized – and superior – remake.

Leslie Halliwell, in his Film Guide, calls the original “Gigot” a “grotesque piece of self-indulgence.” It wasn’t as bad as all that, but it was irredeemably sentimental.

Macy is much more pragmatic. His Gigot – Charley Gigot, who lives in the basement of the apartment building where he works wordlessly as a super – isn’t that pleasant of a guy. His closest companion is a tiny monkey, he trades repair work for sexual favors with women in the building, and when he’s first asked to look after a young black girl (played by Keke Palmer) he wants no part of her.

Eventually they get closer, even as Gigot’s life slowly falls apart. He loses one thing after another, and loses the girl, too, before embarking on a path of self-discovery that has him confront his own tragic past and the accident that robbed him of both speech and hope.

The small supporting roles here are filled with heavyweights eager to trade small scenes with Macy. Catherine O’Hara is a woman who will sleep with Gigot, but only figuratively; he’s not allowed to spend the night. Don Rickles is the fiery tenant who does all the talking as Gigot listens, an arrangement that suits them both just fine.

Palmer, a neophyte actor, gets less out of her role than more accomplished young performers might have, but she invests other scenes with a likable naturalness.

Macy, on screen virtually every moment without ever saying a word, is the strong center around which “The Wool Cap” confidently revolves. It is a pleasure to watch him, because you never seem to catch him acting.

Macy and Schacter have taken Gleason’s original script and toughened it up substantially, giving “The Wool Cap” a happy ending but making Gigot earn it. (The title, by the way, refers to Gigot’s ever-present choice of headwear.)

Showing up the weekend before Thanksgiving, but with a Christmas payoff, “The Wool Cap” is one of the first of the year’s new holiday movies. When the dust settles, and the snow clears, expect it to rank among the best.