Vincente Minnelli (1958)
James Jones’s best known novel, From Here to Eternity, was 861 pages long and became a 118-minute film that is dramatically taut but emotionally extensive, thanks to the very skilful screenplay by Daniel Taradash and the masterly direction of Fred Zinnemann. Jones’s next book, Some Came Running, covers 1,200 pages; Vincente Minnelli’s screen version, released in the same year that he made Gigi, runs 136 minutes. As a distillation of a doorstop novel (the screenplay is by John Patrick and Arthur Sheekman), it emulates From Here to Eternity only in proportional terms: Some Came Running feels too long but also too sketchy to give its characters satisfying depth. (Other consequences of the strenuous process of abbreviation appear to be some bewildering glitches in the timeframe of the story and the unsolved mystery of the meaning of the title.) It’s still a well-told story, though, and a very entertaining film, even if the interactions of the actors are more interesting than those of the characters. Frank Sinatra is Dave Hirsh, an army veteran and (in his own view) failed writer. Dave returns, as a result of being put on a bus from Chicago when he’s drunk, to his small home town of Parkman, Indiana. Shirley MacLaine is Ginny, golden-hearted tart, whom Dave has met in Chicago and who arrives in Parkman on the same bus: she seems already to have fallen in (unrequited) love with him. On his first evening back, his professionally successful and personally unhappy brother (Arthur Kennedy) and his wife (Leora Dana) have Dave meet one of his former teachers (Larry Gates) and the latter’s ice-maiden, bluestocking daughter Gwen (Martha Hyer), with whom Dave is immediately smitten. (Gwen teaches creative writing and is convinced Dave is a major talent.)
The early scenes draw you in. Sinatra is relaxed and transparent (he has a gift for letting the audience see what’s going on inside his character in a way the other characters in the film may not see). There’s a promising tension between social surface and behind the scenes in the brother’s household. Some Came Running starts to go wrong once Dave’s romance with Gwen takes centre stage. This is not just because you get the sense that the film-makers think dialogue the subject of which is literature is necessarily a cut above. (Perhaps the worst bit of writing in the whole picture is Gwen’s answer to a question from one of her students about the personal morality of great writers.) It’s also because both the main female characters are crudely polarised; and the realisation on screen of the construct that is Gwen is gruesome. Although it’s hard to tell how much this is the effect of Martha Hyer’s awkward, unnuanced acting, Gwen’s wanting to talk about fine writing rather than make love comes across as pathological. This arctic blonde and her albino-ish father are a creepy combination. (There’s a very odd moment when the father persuades Gwen to take a long distance call from Dave. She starts telling Dave over the phone that she loves and misses him while father sits well within earshot, playing chess with himself.) In contrast, Shirley MacLaine’s performance is occasionally overeager but she’s so vivid and gives herself over to the role of Ginny so fully that she often transcends the tired, condescending conception of the part. The idea that it’s a revelation to show that a person with limited brain power can still be emotionally alert and vulnerable is insulting but MacLaine is often touching. Getting the audience to understand what draws him to Gwen defeats Sinatra; his connection with MacLaine helps him bring off the bigger challenge of making believable Dave’s sudden acceptance of Ginny’s unconditional love – even after the film has suddenly changed gear (it then keeps speeding up) in a garishly melodramatic last half hour.
The relationship between Sinatra and Dean Martin, as Dave’s hard-drinking gambler friend Bama, is wrong in a different way: compared with the lack of heat between Dave and Gwen and the intellectual mismatch of Dave and Ginny, Dave and Bama seem not just kindred spirits but like a long and happily married couple. There are fairly lame subplots involving Frank’s teenage daughter and secretary. (It’s no surprise that Shirley MacLaine became and stayed a star – or that Martha Hyer, Nancy Gates (the secretary) and Betty Lou Keim (the daughter) sank without trace.) The charged score by Elmer Bernstein is effective when it seems to be working with what’s happening on screen, overwrought when it seems to be filling a dramatic vacuum. In the final shot, Bama, for the first time, chooses to remove his hat. Beyond that, it’s not clear whether we’re meant to believe that a change of character/heart has been visited on him or Dave or Gwen. That ambiguity might in a different film be welcome: in one which pins down character so deliberately for the most part, it seems a copout.
22 May 2008
