Film

Some Came Running

Cert: PG

Description: Re-release of the 1958 drama based on the novel by James Jones, centred on aspiring author Dave Hirsch, who inadvertently finds himself back home in smalltown Indiana, accompanied by floosie Ginnie. Alcohol helps to blot out Dave's harrowing experiences of the war, and to soften any tension with his brother Frank and wife Agnes. Bitter rivalries reignite, however, when Dave befriends professional gambler Bama and falls madly in love with schoolteacher Gwen French, then begins to take an active interest in the affairs of Frank's daughter Dawn.

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Dir: Vincente Minnelli.

Cast: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, Arthur Kennedy

Country: US.

Year: 1958.

Duration: 136mins

Ahead of time

Kings of cool: Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in Some Came Running

Terror's Advocate review

By Derek Malcolm
15 May 2008

There is a character in Jean-Luc Godard�s Contempt who won�t remove his hat, even in the bathtub, because he wants to look like Dean Martin in this 1958 Vincente Minnelli drama.

It�s about a GI (Frank Sinatra) returning from World War II to a small town where festering hypocrisy reigns supreme.

The French love the film. Others may find it melodramatic and overblown. One thing is sure, however: both Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine, as his blowsy girlfriend, are good, and Minnelli was surely in advance of his time decrying the often poisonous respectability of small-town America.