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Frank Sinatra's arrival by bus to his old turf is reworked by Minnelli in Some Came Running, Otto Preminger has it in two splendid strokes: A tracking shot follows the protagonist past pool halls and pawn shops, then a reverse close-up from inside the saloon frames him next to neon letters in reverse. "Here we go, down and dirty." The arm shines at cards until heroin takes its toll, fresh out of prison it is kept busy with drumsticks, but, as the dandified pusher (Darren McGavin) says, "the monkey never dies. When you kick him off, he just hides in a corner, waitin' his turn." A whole seedy neighborhood in the studio as a laboratory experiment, add to it a roving camera and there's a conscious transposition of Germanic Neue Sachlichkeit to the American Lower Depths. "That unfinished feeling" in the vortex, everybody's story, from McGavin's malignant urbanity to Arnold Stang's ratty obsequiousness to Robert Strauss' cigar-chewing truculence to Eleanor Parker's full-bodied neediness. The idealized life is a pair of mannequins in a window display, true warmth is in the burlesque house with the doleful hostess (Kim Novak). Eyes, twitchy and glazed over, register the craving, the crackup comes in the wake of a marathon poker match. "What's it a sign of when a dealer's hand begins to shake?" Above all, the Preminger scrutiny chipping away at his superstar, long takes to lay bare the desperation behind Sinatra's hepcat confidence. (Alone in a locked room with his addiction, he paces and bellows and shivers before the merciless lens.) Vidor's Street Scene for the denouement, a new beginning for the characters and a midpoint for the filmmaker between noir impressionism and hot-button topicality. Cinematography by Samuel Leavitt. With John Conte, Doro Merande, George E. Stone, George Mathews, Emile Meyer, and Leonid Kinskey. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |