Comme un torrent

Dave Hirsh is through with the army. A drinking binge with his buddies results in Dave being loaded onto a Greyhound bus bound for Parkman, Indiana (his seldom-visited hometown) clutching the few things he has managed to collect - Ginnie the floozie ("that dumb poushover") and a bag containing two bottles of scotch, the tattered manuscript of a love story and Hirsh's beloved copies of Faulkner, Wolfe and Steinbeck. Dave was once a writer of considerable promise. It had not been Dave's intention to revisit Parkman, but now that he's here he decides to hang around for a while. He wants to settle a score with his brother Frank.

The proprietor of a thriving jewellery store and a rising star in the Rotarians, Frank Hirsh is the worst kind of small-town phoney. He is a master of glib sales patter and the vacuous small talk of country club social evenings. Though he would rather die than say so, he doesn't want his kid brother within a hundred miles of Parkman. Dave is bohemian, hedonistic, creative - in other words, thing which threaten scandal. Having to socialise with Dave (folks would gossip if he shunned his own brother), Frank spends the time alternately bragging about his vulgar prosperity and timidly hinting that maybe Dave should move on.

"I'm an expert on tramps," wisecracks Dave (played by Frank Sinatra). Typically of Ol' Blue Eyes' projects of the period ("Ocean's Eleven", "Come Blow Your Horn") women are depicted as chattles to be despised and traded.

Equally typically, it is from Dean Martin's character that the most virulent misogyny comes. Bama Dillert warns Dave that you either give women orders, or allow them to dominate you. There is no other way. Bama hangs around with Rosalie, the lowlife zombie, and tells Ginnie to "just be a good girl and shut up". It is poor, good-natured Ginnie who gets most of the abuse. "You'll go anywhere with anybody," says her husband-to-be. She is grateful when he allows her to clean the house for him. Edith the nice girl and Dawn the perfect daughter are shown to be whores at heart. Even superior, educated Gwen has her sluttish moments.

Dave's rediscovery of his writing talent is somewhat improbable, as is the volume of whiskey supposedly consumed by these 'real men'. Even more unlikely is Dave's romantic rush of blood to the head near the end of the picture, and the melodramatic consequences which flow from it.

There is a Cahn and Van Heusen theme song, of course ("To Love And Be Loved"). Shirley Maclaine is good as Ginnie the 'escort' with the heart of gold. She tended hereafter to be typecast as a trollop ("Irma La Douce", "Woman Times Seven", "My Geisha", "Sweet Charity", "Two Mules"). The set of the French house is marvellous, with its easy-on-the -eye three-dimensional layout. Martha Hyer as Gwen seems miscast as Frankie's love interest, not least because her head is twice the size of his.

Typical Minnelli masterpiece, as melodramatic, emotional and stylised as his more famous musicals. Lumpen James Jones novel stripped to the bone, its macho posturings shifted to anatomy of a society. Slow, repetitive narrative mirrors stagnation of such a society. Impotence, disease and writer's block all part of a wider malaise. The psychological visuals are unsurpassed, gaudy, intense floods of light, colour and composition disrupt superficial politeness. Climax one of the greatest in American cinema; the three male leads do the most difficult work of their careers. Shirley MacLaine gets hard deal, though.

A product of the Eisenhower fifties, Some Came Running, adapted from a James Jones novel, stars Frank Sinatra as a footloose writer returning to his Midwestern home town right after World War II. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, in a grand, florid manner, it is essentially a smart soap opera, with some very deep emotions, shot in garish color, that can at its best bear comparison with the films of Douglas Sirk, and is in some ways better, more imaginative. The story matters less than the characters, which aside from Sinatra's artist-in-uniform, include an alcoholic Southern gambler, played by Dean Martin, who's also his best friend; a pathetic floozie from Chicago who followed Sinatra home (Shirley MacLaine); Sinatra's brother, a frustrated if successful businessman (Arthur Kennedy); and a prim, somewhat stuffy school-teacher (Martha Hyer), who admires Sinatra as a writer but cares little for him as a man. Sinatra is torn between bad girl MacLaine and good girl Hyer; and though the former is easy to be with, if not much of a conversationalist, the latter is an ice princess, and proud of it. Understandably, Sinatra reverts to gambling, drinking and carousing with friend Dean Martin, but is clearly not happy with it. He would like to find a place in society, but how? Where?

This one could have been a classic, and the cast is for the most part excellent. MacLaine's Method-ish performance is the only jarring note, but it's a loud one. A number of things keep the film "down", or at any rate in second gear. First of all Minnelli was as man and director such an aesthete that he spends much of his time painting with his camera. Aided in no small measure by the excellent photography of William Daniels, his compositions and color create an often surreal effect, almost hallucinogenic, ultimately anti-realistic, though fascinating to watch, and this in the end detracts from the story. On the other hand Minnelli was good with people, and his more intimate scenes between people who really know each other,--Sinatra and Martin, Sinatra and MacLaine--show a genuine understanding of human behavior. Back and forth the movie goes. That its setting is Indiana make both the movie and the characters seem out of place in this most conservative of midwestern states. There is none of the wholeness here that one gets from, for instance, Kazan's On the Waterfront, where everything comes together beautifully and nothing is out of place. Here everyone seems to belong either elsewhere or nowhere, to be thinking or dreaming of other things, to not really care much for their surroundings. There is also a strong undercurrent of Tennessee Williams and William Inge-inspired textbook Freud, with the characters either sexually obsessed, sexually frustrated or sexually avoidant. I doubt the word sex is ever actually used in the movie, but it's everywhere. The Elmer Bernstein score, jazzy and doubtless influenced by Alex North's music for Streetcar Named Desire, tends to telegraph, often hilariously, how one ought to feel about what's going on, especially the raunchy, down-dirty greasy horns he deploys whenever the story moves to the wrong side of the tracks or to a card game, as if to say, "Okay Middle America, this is NOT the way to be".

For all its flaws, the movie has many grace notes, some of them even musical, as Bernstein occasionally redeems himself, especially in his lovely main theme. The compartmentalized, evasive lives most of the characters in the film live are, shorn of the melodrama, not unlike real life. Even when the plot becomes predictable the underlying emotions of the main characters remain authentic, and the result is in many ways a compartmentalized movie that at times seems to take its style from the dreams and fantasies of its various characters, becoming in effect their view of life rather than their actual lives. This feeling of fantasy versus reality becomes the movie's major issue when an old boyfriend of MacLaine's shows up, starts drinking, and begins to stalk her. The danger in the air is palpable, and as many of these later scenes take place literally in a carnival atmosphere, the film becomes simultaneously urgent and otherworldly, like someone coming off a mescaline trip who suddenly realizes that he's standing on the ledge of a twenty storey building. This was very daring of Minnelli, and I'm sure intentional, and the ending is truly heartbreaking, and yet aesthetic also, with the director refusing to give up his florid manner even in the last scene. I sense that the tragedy in the film had a very private meaning for Minnelli, and that he intended for it to have the same effect on the audience; to trigger personal issues in each viewer that he could take away from the movie which were independent of the movie. In this he succeeded magnificently.

At 1200+ pages the James Jones novel "Some Came Running" deals with family divisions, drinking, gambling, sexual repression, adultery and other small town USA vices. All this is embedded in a general theme about the hypocrisy so pervasive in 1948 Middle America.

Jones was most famous for his explorations of WWII and its aftermath. "Some Came Running" is somewhat autobiographical as Jones was one of those returning soldiers from WWII whose long absence gave them a new perspective on details in the social fabric that they had not really noticed before. He was from a small town in Illinois and served in the 25th Infantry Division. He was present during the attack on Pearl Harbor and the battle of Guadalcanal. Basing "From Here to Eternity" and "The Thin Red Line on his experiences.

The film adaptation of "Some Came Running" is long but entertaining, especially if you like seeing a lot of big-name stars. Despite its setting in a small town (it was filmed in Madison, Indiana) this was a big budget epic picture.

The Jones character is named Dave Hirsch and played by Frank Sinatra. He is a successful writer but has not written anything for several years. The film begins inside a bus on its way to Dave's hometown of Parkman, Indiana. He has just been discharged from the army and is wearing his uniform (no rank insignia is visible).

His brother Frank (Arthur Kennedy) has become a big shot in the town and introduces him to Gwen French (Martha Hyer), a college literature teacher who is impressed with his writing but put off by his wild life style. Dave has been followed to Parkton by Ginny (Shirley MacLaine), an airhead he met in a Chicago bar. This sets up the film's love triangle.

Dave becomes friends with a local gambler named Bama Dillert (Dean Martin), moves into his house, and pairs up with him on the regional poker circuit where they are very successful.

While Dave tries to come to terms with his roots and with his future, his brother Frank begins an affair with his secretary.

Generally speaking, adopting a 1200 page book to the screen is ill advised and "Some Came Running" is no exception, if only because the screenwriter incorporated too much of the story for a feature length film to handle effectively.

But the producers compounded this problem with the hiring Vincente Minnelli as director and by casting for box office draw instead of acting talent. This resulted in a film with slick production values, an extremely thin plot, lots of characters (but none with any depth), and a too long running time. Can you say flat, lifeless, prosaic, and unconvincing?

Minnelli was a freak about visual details. He was more interested in whether an actress' dress coordinated well with the wallpaper in the set than how the actress handled her character. The inexperienced MacLaine has commented on how the only guidance she received during filming was from her male co-stars. In fact it was Sinatra who insisted the film end differently than the book as a way to make MacLaine's character more memorable. Minnelli's lack of interest in acting for the camera made him an especially poor choice for an overloaded film that needed subtle and nuanced elements in each scene to flesh out the characterization.

For the same reason, a non-actor like "one-take" Sinatra was completely over-matched by the demands of playing his character. Sinatra was comfortable playing himself in front of the camera and in most of his roles this was more than satisfactory, as it is during the early stages of "Some Came Running". But things start to crash and burn with the start of his scenes with Hyer, and the film essentially collapses the first time he reveals that he loves her.

Because of time constraints this romance had to be compressed, requiring a really skilled performance to set up things for the declaration of love, if it is to be at all convincing. Even if Sinatra took direction well (he didn't) and even if Minnelli was a master of acting for the camera (few were worse), the sudden transformation from Sinatra to lovesick puppy would have been a difficult sell.

A very interesting element of this film is Minnelli's obsession with the sets and the moving camera. There are no close-ups and relatively few medium shots. Almost everything is a wide shot or the master shot itself. This could reflect Minnelli's overriding interest in showcasing his sets, or indicate that Sinatra's work habits made changing camera setups difficult, or that the editor found that many of the performances could not withstand close scrutiny. Whatever the cause, it makes it much more difficult to identify and connect with characters who are always so distant from the camera. This is a detail you may want to watch for the next time you see the film.

This was Dean Martin's signature performance and he is truly excellent. Arthur Kennedy won an Oscar for his portrayal of Frank Hirsh but I think the best performance of all was by Leora Dane as his wife Agnes. Their scenes together have real energy, and almost creepy believability.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

A garish , extreme drama about thunderous relationships , complex love stories and tragic events . Madison, Indiana , 73 miles from Cincinnati , suddenly found itself elevated to more than just an insignificant spot on the American map due to this film . Dealing with a burn-out writer called David Hirsh : Frank Sinatra returning from the war to the small town he grew up, and along the way , he is chased by a vulgar , neurotic woman : Shirley McLaine who fell in love for him . Concerning the dramatic curve of Sinatra's agonising voyage of self-discovery and as a result ends in his self-acceptance . Other central characters are Arthur Kennedy as his brother , Dean Martin as a compulsive card player , the wealthy teacher Martha Hyer , among others

An intense, spectacular drama about snobbishness with thrills , brawls , emotion , tragic romances and anything else . It provides a contrived plot with superbly orchestred intensity of the feelings the main roles generate in their numerous clashes . Producers financed a big budget and star-studded cast to carry out this great production in which 80 actors and location workers moved in overnight to make the movie of James Jones' massive novel. Madison bore a remarkable resemblance to Jones' description of the fictional town of Parkman. Main and support cast are pretty good . Frank Sinatra is frankly well as Dave Hirsh returning serviceman meets all shorts of prejudices and problems, and Shirley MacLaine provides overacting as a silly street girl , while Dean Martin gives surprisingly one of his best interpretations as a stubborn gambler . And support cast is frankly magnificent , such as : Arthur Kennedy , Nancy Gates , Leora Dana , but was durable blonde Martha Hyer who grabbed the movie's nomination .

Colorful cinematography in Technicolor by William H Daniels , showing splendidly cheap-neon lit bars and cold houses . Moving and stirring musical score by Elmer Bernstein in his usual style. This brawling and attractive motion picture was competently directed by Vincente Minnelli . Vincente was one of the best Hollywod professionals , shooting a lot of films with penchant for Musical , Drama and Comedy , such as : Cabin in the Sky, Meet me in St Louis , Yolanda and the Thief, The Clock , Ziegfeld Follies , The Pirate , Undercurrent , Madame Bovary , Father of the Bride, An American in París, The Bad and the Beautiful, The Band Wagon, The long long trailer , Brigadoon , Kismet, The Cobweb , Tea and sympathy , Gigi , Bells are ringing , Two weeks in another town, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , Goodbye Charlie , The Sandpiper , A matter of Time , among others. Rating 7/10 . Better that average . Worthwhile watching .