SOME CAME RUNNING (1958) judges its hypocritical small town types--henpecked husband (Arthur Kennedy); his shrewish country club wife (Leora Dana); a schoolmarm inhibitionist (Martha Hyer); an errant millionaire's daughter (Betty Lou Keim)--even more harshly than they in turn judge the sexually active, hard-drinking rififi of their small Indiana town. So in the end, does finger pointing at finger pointing make a right? As it is there's little reason we should care about this boozehound "writer" played by Sinatra, especially if he needs a Dogville's worth of hypocrites just to look knightly by comparison. His brother may be a henpecked phony, but isn't even that better than just sulking?
Godard fans will note that gambling man Dean Martin (who befriends Sinatra since he's good at poker) never takes off his hat, even indoors or in the presence of a lady, inspiring Michel Piccoli to do the same five years later in CONTEMPT. It's worth comparing the two films, as Piccoli's writer is more like Sinatra's bitter brooder than Dino's breezy gambler. All of them coast along on a river of women whom they disdain: Michel never 'gets' why Bardot suddenly feels contempt for him, but he's felt it for her right along; Frankie never 'gets' why he must snap at anyone who suggests he's a good writer (shouldn't writers have some grasp of their own insecurities?), while at the same time anointing his hotel room with artfully uncracked copies of Steinbeck; and like it or not, MacLaine is his girlfriend, not the teacher, no matter how he'd like it to be the other way around.
The best scenes in SCR are the earliest: drinking in the wee hours of the morning, commanding Vegas stature with the bellboy while checking into the nowhere town's Main street hotel. Minnelli's brilliance shines through in these scenes: Frank alone in a room with a bottle and a window as the sun comes up. It's a feeling I know well. It feels in those precious moments like the world is yours, serene and sublime and empty. But when you wake up, around lunch time, it's a bustling and honking and glaring sunshine nightmare. Frank tries to be a good sport--it's only when he's around the phony country club types his veneer gets sour--but he won't leave them alone, so he's sour all the time.
Dean Martin, by contrast, is a breezy nonchalant rogue with no need for validation or labels like 'writer' (though I abhor his term 'pig' to describe his women). As such he may be an inspiration for both Sinatra's and Piccoli's onscreen characters but they don't swallow the pill all the way. Sinatra just expects Martin to give up drinking since it's 'doctor's orders' - in real life I don't think either James Jones, Sinatra, or Godard for that matter, would expect Martin to do anything but be true to his bad boozy self, to the end, even if that end is mere weeks away. And Michel's writer in CONTEMPT never seems to realize he can just say no to Palance's egomaniacal American, regardless of the check amount.
Still we stick around, because Martin and Sinatra have laid-back chemistry in their macho backroom poker sessions. Is anything more uniquely poetic and American than Sinatra with his tie loosened, nursing a tumbler of blended whiskey and a cigarette while bluffing a high stakes hand? Or Dean with his morning cup of bourbon to which he gingerly adds a dash coffee? The score by Elmer Bernstein is boozily thunderous and makes ugly Americana into something that still has depth and tear-stained class. Walking away from this movie you may feel, as I do, frustrated and annoyed, but you have to admit, it's a lot like home.
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