Rent Some Came Running (1958)

Shirley MacLaine steals the show - Some Came Running review by CW

Dated and flat until Shirley MacLaine is in a scene. She definitely makes it worth watching. She is absolutely lovely and nails her role as a somewhat simple sexy woman who is crazy mad in love with the character played by Frank Sinatra. She won the Academy Award for her part.

Colourful Melodrama (spoiler). - Some Came Running review by Steve

This is set in the midwest but employs all of the disciples of '50s southern melodramas. There's the male drifter who is back in town; the beautiful but frozen female intellectual; the floozy; the weak and shifty brother who stays behind to pocket the filthy lucre; and the last relics of old money. And there is the awesome Cinemascope and the beautiful colour processes of the period.

Frank Sinatra plays an alcoholic soldier who returns to his old hometown after the war, with Shirley MacLaine's dim bulb nightclub 'hostess' in tow. He uncovers near limitless hypocrisy, but below the surface. Appearances are everything. He develops a close relationship with outwardly charismatic, but inwardly repulsive poker shark (Dean Martin) and aspires to an inhibited, censorious schoolteacher (Martha Hyer).

 Ultimately, Frank settles for the frightening and relentless unconditional love of the moll, which leads to tragedy. This is Sinatra's best performance, as a morally ambiguous anti-hero who is disgusted by the sanctimony the war took him from. But its MacLaine's film, and she breaks your heart as an abused, exploitable girl who seems to have no personality other than the prodigious intensity of her feelings.

 The film is intelligently directed by Minnelli with long camera edits allowing the actors to develop each scene. The mood gets progressively darker until it's eventually quite like film noir, but in colour. The action climax, with the stunning, impressionist kaleidoscope of lights scored by Elmer Bernstein's piano led jazz big band, is a knockout.