evanston_dad Drippy soap opera from Vincente Minelli, that most inconsistent of directors. How can the same man make such wonderful films as "Meet Me in St. Louis" and "Bigger Than Life" and then give us two clunkers -- "Some Came Running" and "Gigi" -- in the same year?Frank Sinatra plays a man who returns to his hometown after a stint in the army and for three hours wanders around trying to decide which girl he wants to stick with -- the floozy with the heart of gold, played by Shirley MacLaine as a screen test for "Sweet Charity," or the uptight affluent girl, played by Martha Hyer in one of those god-awful 1950s hairstyles and without an ounce of evidence as to why anyone would want to date her in the first place. The film goes on forever, with things just happening without any consistency of character or any narrative logic. The screenplay is terrible. Dean Martin, who I usually can't stand, is the only thing that saves this movie, since he's the only person in it you could even conceive of spending time with.In its perennial determination to reward mediocre films with heaps of award recognition, the Academy gave "Some Came Running" five nominations (mind you, in a year when Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" didn't score a single one): Best Actress (MacLaine, in what is really a supporting role), Best Supporting Actor (Arthur Kennedy, as Sinatra's sleazy brother), Best Supporting Actress (Hyer), Best Costume Design, and Best Original Song, for the warbly "To Love and Be Loved," which I completely missed in the film itself because it's played as background music at a night club. I was expecting it to come bursting over the opening credits, in true 1950s melodrama fashion.Grade: C-

kijii This is a good drama set in the small town of Parkman, Indiana, in 1946 after the war. Frank Sinatra stars in this movie version of James Jones's second novel, as he had in Jones's first novel, From Here to Eternity (1953).This story depicts a post-war "Coming Home" type of story about a soldier trying adjust to a small gossipy town, where he was never really wanted in the first place--at least by his brother (Arthur Kennedy) and his family who view him as the black sheep of the family.On the one hand, Sinatra's character is viewed as an aspiring and gifted writer that is appreciated by a local school teacher (Martha Hyer) and her wealthy professorial father (Larry Gates). On the other hand, he is viewed by the local newspaper and town gossip, as a no-good drifting drinker and gambler who hangs around cheap bars with his floozy pickup girl (Shirley MacLaine) and his locally acquired gambling partner (Dean Martin). Torn between these two worlds threatens to tear him apart.

Robert J. Maxwell Accompanied by Shirley MacLaine, a hooker he picked up in Chicago, Sinatra, a self-described failed writer, is discharged from the US Army and wakes up, hung over, in his home town of Parkman, Indiana. It's the first time he's been home in eighteen years. It's supposed to be 1948, although you'd never know it. Thereafter, intrigues and jealousies and conflicts come and go, evoking memories of soap operas, only told from the man's point of view instead of Craig's other wife's.There are no bands to welcome Sinatra. His older brother, Arthur Kennedy, is a pompous loudmouth who owns a jewelry shop. The script renders Kennedy as a hypocrite but doesn't deprive him of some human qualities. He loves his teen-aged daughter, is treated indifferently by his wealthy wife, and suffers a lapse in his morality when, stricken by an understandable loneliness, he makes it with his attractive secretary, Nancy Gates.Sinatra has given up writing, almost, but take up with the town's intellectuals, including Martha Hyer as a professor of creative writing, who finds his work admirable and sells one of his stories to The Atlantic magazine. (Short story writing; an art now as dead as Medieval glass blowing.) Hyer is an actress whose appeal has always eluded me. She's attractive enough but her performances always sound as if she's demonstrating her skill in a beauty contest. Her character here is cultured and unnatural. She's physically attracted to Sinatra. Of course. He's Chairman of the Board. But the ex-soldier's emotions are to powerful for her and she rejects him and his lower-class friends.Sinatra's friends include the gambler, Dean Martin, who is able to drink three times as much as Old Blue Eyes and the next morning, when Sinatra looks a thorough wreck, manages to be spic and span and on top of his game -- at least until he discovers he has Type 2 diabetes, which he shrugs off.Shirley MacLaine is an agreeable actress. She's pretty, despite the make-up overload and wretched wardrobe, and forthright in her artless candor. She'd do anything for Frank because she loves him beyond imagining. In the end, that's what's required of her.I know it was directed by Vincent Minelli but it's hard to tell. Everything about the movie is more or less routine. It's not one of Elmer Bernstein's better scores -- superabundant and lurid. Colorful characters in everyday settings doing things that aren't especially interesting.

Michael Neumann The screen adaptation of James Jones' novel is little more than a transparent, third-person daydream, presenting every writer's inflated image of himself as the tough, honest, alienated, misunderstood, sensitive, handsome stranger who changes the lives of a stereotypical small town community, from the attractive (but sexually repressed) schoolmarm to the dimwitted (but kindhearted) floozy. Most of the actors are likewise typecast: rat-packers Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra (who owed Jones a debt of gratitude for his comeback role in 'From Here to Eternity') do a lot of drinking and card playing; Shirley MacLaine is her usual nutty self; and poor Arthur Kennedy sleepwalks resignedly through his thankless role as the rebel writer's conservative older brother. The film can still be entertaining if seen as a dated post-war soap opera, and here I freely admit my opinions might have been compromised by seeing the film on VHS: the colorful wide-screen production is totally lost in the pan-and-scan video format, leaving the impression that some vital action always occurring just out of frame.