Some Came Running

1958 melodrama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A wayward son returns home to Parkman, Indiana, juggles a couple of dames, catches up with an older brother, and befriends a gambler who is having a love affair with his hat.

An oddly-foreboding opening tune clues us in that not all of these characters are going to wind up with happy endings as we watch small-town America from the windows of Sinatra's bus. The colors just pop in this opening scene, and the colors pop throughout the movie, right to the almost-expressionistic climax with its carnival lights and cartoon darkness. Sinatra's Dave Hirsch answers that Parkman "used to be" his hometown, but you can't lose a hometown any easier than you can shake the past, and Hirsch is about to find that out.

There's a lot to like about this Vincente Minnelli picture though it hasn't aged well. The men in Some Came Running are all jackasses. Seriously, every single one. They're the kinds of dudes who refer to all women as "dames" or, when they've got a little alcohol in them which seems to be all the time, "pigs." The chauvinism dims the experience of watching  some interesting but entirely flat characters doing interesting and sometimes flat things. Dialogue hints at pasts that the characters understand even if the actors don't, and there's always a quick bite. And as I said, the colors pop.

Sinatra and Arthur Kennedy and Dean Martin and Dean Martin's hat are all serviceable, but it's Shirley MacLaine who really steals the show. She acts circles around the others here. Her best moment is when she interrupts a nightclub performance by belting out a stirring rendition of "After You've Gone." What a dame!

Minnelli shows off during a nighttime chase sequence at some sort of carnival that has conveniently rolled into town. A shot with an out-of-towner in front of a wall bathed in this red light with this intense score swell made me laugh, but I later liked characters shot in front of a colorful Ferris wheel. There's a story about Sinatra not enjoying his experience in Madison, Indiana, and threatening to not finish this movie during the filming of that scene when Minnelli wanted to move that Ferris wheel about six feet. That enhances my enjoyment of the entire movie.

I'm sure Madison, Indiana, still looks a lot like this.