Some Came Running

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Sabin
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Post by Sabin »

"I think this dame needs to get off my dick and act."

And he was right.
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Post by criddic3 »

Some mention should be made of Dean Martin's performance. While he often played similar characters in his films, he had one of his better roles in this one. This being before the Rat Pack films of the 1960s, it is an interesting pairing of Sinatra and Martin in a serious film. Add to that MacLaine, who if I'm not mistaken was suggested by Sinatra for the film. I could be wrong, but seem to remember reading that somewhere.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Susan Hayward on her fifth nomination for I Want to Live! was a foregone conclusion, though a win for either Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame or Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof would not have been a shock. Deborah Kerr in Separate Tables and MacLaine in Some Came Running had no chance. In fact MacLaine's nomination over Ingrid Bergman in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness and Leslie Caron in Gigi was itself something of a surprise, though more deserved than Hyer's or Arthur Kennedy's for that matter.
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Post by Sabin »

Did anybody think that Shirley MacLaine had a shot or was Susan Hayward a foregone conclusion?
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Post by Big Magilla »

This is the first movie that I was consciously aware of being hyped for Oscars. I remember Martha Hyer giving newspaper and magazine interview after interview in late December and well into the New Year - the film did not open in New York until late Janaury due to the continuing popularilty of its Christmas attraction, Auntie Mame.

Even though I didn't know anything about Oscar politics at the time, I was convinced Hyer's nomination was due to her hawking of the film. I always thought her nomination should have gone to Hermione Gingold in Gigi, Minnelli's then more popular film which won nine Oscars including one for Minnelli.
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Post by Sabin »

I must ask though...Martha Hyers.

I understand the trappings of melodrama and I can intellectually place Frank's adoration of her within Brechtian trappings: she loves the artist, he insists he is not an artist, he bends her to his will, she recoils back ultimately repressing any desire for the man, and then eradicating any love she may or may not have for him after meeting the kind of girl who loves him for the man and doesn't even understand the artist for a moment. But Hyers is such a barely interesting cold fish of a performer. I don't take her scenes seriously on an emotional level at all and, unless Minnelli is aware of this and is utilizing Hyers' total lack of range to a coldly analytical Brechtian arc, I think I'm supposed to.

Contrast that with Shirley MacLaine who admittedly is playing a very different kind of character. I must ask: considering that on the page Ginny is very much a supporting character, was it the actress' brilliant performance that motivated her shift into Leading Actress and Hyers' to Supporting? Because on the page, it would seem to very much be the other way around.

I have yet to watch 'Gigi' but I can't believe that it's more complex than what Minnelli does with this film. The only musical of Minnelli's that I prefer to his melodramas at this point is 'Meet Me in St. Louis' which has the admitted advantage of being 'Meet Me in St. Louis'. Thanks for the recommendations.
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Post by Damien »

Some Came Running is a wonderful movie, and a typically fascinating Minnelli melodrama. (My God, the psycholoogical states that man could express through camera movement and color.)

It's one of the purest examples of the prime theme of the director's work -- the artistic temperament at odds with a hostile/indifferent/confused universe and the conflict within the artist between creative and more, ummm, common impulses.

Minnelli himself escaped from a stifling small town like that in the film and the ambience seems so right, and it's fascinating how he has so much more empathy for the town's low-lifes rather than its better citizens. (Has intellectual pretentiousness ever been presented more acutely visually than in the bookcase-festooned kitchen?)

The delirous climax works on a number of levels. On a purely visual level, the extravagance of the lighting and hues are amazing. The contrapuntal effect of the giddy and garish setting playing against the action that is unfolding is unsettling and heartbreaking. Moreover, the color and the elaborate (but seamless) camera work are a perfect correlative to the angst and emotional confusion of the characters.

Josh, I'm so glad you were impressed by the film (I remember being blown away when I first saw it in a Melodrama Film class in college.) I really like your referring to it as "a tapestry of town manners." Although there are any number of other such films of this sub-genre in the late 50s and early 60s, none of them was made by a director with the same flair or iexpressiveness of Vincente Minnelli. When you get the chance, check out two other great Minnelli melodramas. The Cobweb and Home From The Hill, which are even better.

There's an excellent short piece by the superb critic Fred Camper here:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/2004/0104/040102.html

And Zahveed, Some Came Running is defintely worth owning. Let the baby skip a meal or two. :D




Edited By Damien on 1204326603
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Sabin
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Post by Sabin »

I certainly don't blame you.
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Post by Zahveed »

Sabin wrote:Apparently it's coming out on DVD this May.
Maybe I'll pick it up. I don't know. I've been picky about what I buy lately, trying to save money for the fetus and whatnot. :D
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Post by Sabin »

It's well worth seeing, Zahveed. Beautiful widescreen cinematography and some very good acting. Apparently it's coming out on DVD this May.
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Post by Zahveed »

Sounds like a good flick, I'll have to check it out sometime.
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Post by OscarGuy »

Sabin wrote:...really not what I wanted to see happen here. I understand why the decision was made to lump all these together but most people only see the first post so a post like mine would be more easily visited if there was a visible 50's thread. It's honestly not important. I just wanted to talk about Some Came Running.

It's not important. I just never paid the new layout much mind because I didn't go to the First Century thread which I guess proves your point. Don't know what you're talking about near the end.
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The link to New Posts shows ONLY those that have had posts since the last time you "mark(ed) all as read".

Plus, you can also use the Search button at the top right of the page to look for certain words within the entire board.
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Sabin
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Post by Sabin »

...really not what I wanted to see happen here. I understand why the decision was made to lump all these together but most people only see the first post so a post like mine would be more easily visited if there was a visible 50's thread. It's honestly not important. I just wanted to talk about Some Came Running.

It's not important. I just never paid the new layout much mind because I didn't go to the First Century thread which I guess proves your point. Don't know what you're talking about near the end.
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Post by OscarGuy »

Unlike you, Sabin, I look at statistics when deciding what to do. Here they are:

2009 and Beyond: 7 topics total
2008: 57 topics total
2007: 125 topics total
2000-2006: 112 topics total
The First Century: 77 topics total

By these numbers, the "100 Years" you speak of is hardly a massive number. Certainly fewer than the 2007 thread which only contains...*gasp*...20 polls. Oh so many! I had to be sarcastic because I don't understand why you're complaining. I made the decision for sound reasons. Too many threads and too hard to difficult to find the right place to post things. In doing so, I consolidated the actual number of threads and still the threads are the right size, IMO.

As for the polls you've complained about, as I stated in my other post, all discussion topics should feature a poll. This will allow people to vote their opinion of the film WHILE discussing it. 2007 has both polls and discussion topics. That's two posts for every one in my suggested way of posting.

There is a Search button at the top that allows you to search categories, forums and threads for certain phrases that will allow you to track down the poll or topic you're most interested in. In addition, the New Posts link at the top of the page allows you to look at ONLY the posts that have new messages. That includes when a new topic is posted. So, there's no point in complaining about it and if you have issues, post it where it belongs. Your post has caused this thread, in two-posts-time going off topic. Congratulations for doing what you have complained about happening in the past.
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Sabin
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Post by Sabin »

This is seriously the best organizational plan? 100 years, six years, and a shit load of individual topics mostly filled with polls? Nobody's going to read this. It's lumped in with a hundred years of other stuff! Whatever.

I just watched Vincent Minnelli's 'Some Came Running' and I cannot get this movie out of my head. There's much that irritated me while watching it and yet I can already tell that this is one of those rare movies that presents an entire world to get lost in with its movieness. I can see this movie turning into something of a happy place in times to come.

Frank Sinatra plays a writer whom I can only imagine is much younger in the source novel. He returns from service to his home town to invest a considerable amount of money into the bank rival to that which his older brother works in. From this petty insult unravels a tapestry of town manners. His brother (Arthur Kenney) is a sexually frustrated married man whose wife bounces from repulsion at Frank's arrival to acceptance once his nominal celebrity affords her some attention. Frank is introduced to Martha Hyer, a school teacher who adores his prose and were she not as frigid and annoying as fuck a performer, perhaps a fascinating study of pursuing the artist in lieu of the man, especially considering that Frank doesn't even consider himself a writer anymore and she begins to project onto him. As it is because I found Hyer's performance so stilted, it added a Brechtian air to Sinatra's pursuit of her which is beneficial even though I never for a moment viewed her as a real character.

And on the other hand, there is Shirley MacLaine's Ginny who simultaneously gives one of the most heartbreaking and hysterical performances that I have ever seen in my life. Frank meets her in Chicago (O.S.) and brings her to his home town and quickly dismisses her after he tells her that they're going to get married during a night of drinking he can barely recall. He meets up with her later at a bar and they pick back up. Frank alternates between school teacher and bar floozy, she herself completely aware of his waffling affections but just adores him too much. Because he is Frank and she is completely brilliant in this role, it is not for a moment cloying or half as misogynistic as perhaps it should be. The scenes between Frank and Shirley aren't terribly many but they're substantial enough for a series of films and worthy of revisitation if only to relive their gutter-poetic magic.

The film works towards an ending that is fairly conventional: the young, happy, and in love cannot remain so forever, as the forces of evil track them down. Yet what makes it work is Minnelli's flair for set pieces. My parents themselves thought the cinematography was overwrought; as a work of compensatory visual innovation, I think it's peerless in widescreen cinematography, neon, and orchestration, and that teamed with the lifeforce that is Shirley MacLaine, the result is more devestating than it has any right to be. I'm inclined to say that it's something of a masterpiece even as my emotions were completely turned off during the Martha Hyer's sequences (I cannot believe that she got an Oscar nomination). A major discovery for me, this film.
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