Some Came Running, Some Stayed Away

In 1951, World War II veteran James Jones published a blockbuster novel about the lives and loves of American troops stationed in Honolulu at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. When From Here to Eternity became a film two years later, it took Hollywood by storm. Its 13 Oscar nominations resulted in eight wins, including Best Picture, Best Director, and a statuette for Frank Sinatra, bringing his own bitterness and pugnacious spirit to the role of Maggio, as the year’s Best Supporting Actor.

 It seemed the combination of James Jones’ writing and Sinatra’s acting chops was a potent one. That’s why, when in 1957 Jones published a second novel—this time dealing with a returning soldier during the post-war period—Hollywood again came calling, ready to star Sinatra as a tough-but-tender protagonist in another James Jones adaptation.  But Jones’ new novel, Some Came Running, had a few problems. The New Yorker’s critic colorfully called it “twelve hundred and sixty-six pages of flawlessly sustained tedium.”

 This was the shoot on which Sinatra, always an impatient actor, apparently ripped twenty pages out of the script in order to keep the film’s length close to the two-hour mark. Director Vincente Minnelli, looking for a change of pace from his own sparkling Gigi (also from 1958), had the challenge of corralling Sinatra and co-star Dean Martin, while also staying true to his own artistic vision. It culminated in a brilliantly florid climax, set at night amid the gaudy neon lights of a small-town carnival. The film earned five Oscar noms, mostly in acting categories, but not a single win. (Gigi and the actors from Separate Tables were the year’s big awards recipients.)

 I’ve heard film scholars praise the aesthetics of Some Came Running, as well as Minnelli’s blunt treatment of the hypocrisies of Midwest life. And I can’t deny that there are some strong performances, notably that of Shirley MacLaine (nominated for her first Oscar for this, her all-time favorite role). She plays Ginny, a slightly tawdry but good-hearted waif whose love for Dave leads at last to tragedy. (The film’s tweak of the novel’s original ending definitely increases its poignance.) There’s also good work by Sinatra and by his pal, Dean Martin, as a hard-drinking gambler who’s lovable but on a path to self-destruction.

 All this should make it clear that the film’s plot is an intensely melodramatic one, with far too many characters and lots of lurid small-town misbehavior. When Sinatra’s character, in military uniform, gets off the bus in his old hometown, it’s clear he’s a bit disgusted by the locals, but even more unimpressed with himself. Though he’s published several novels and has something of a literary reputation (like, of course, James Jones), he seems unable to move forward with his writing career. He’s also got a serious grudge against the well-heeled brother (Arthur Kennedy) who’s now one of the town’s leading citizens but chafes at his wife’s snootiness, to the point where he strays with an attractive employee.

 Oddly, it’s through his brother that Sinatra’s Dave comes to know a local professor and his schoolmarm-daughter, both of whom highly respect him as a man of letters. We’re supposed to believe that the prim schoolteacher (Martha Hyer) is Dave’s true love, though—aside from a rare moment when he literally takes her hair down—she seems incapable of passion of any sort.  Her scenes with Sinatra come across as stodgy, as she lectures him on literature and life. Under the circumstances, a gauche, umgrammatical Ginny would seem like an improvement, especially given MacLaine’s wistful charm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Close-Up of War Photographer Lee Miller

Regarding the new film, Lee, Kate Winslet can’t be accused of attaching herself to a vanity project designed to make her look good.  True, she served this biopic of World War II photojournalist Lee Miller as producer as well as star, reportedly laboring for five years to help it come to fruition. Now this sober but fascinating new work, a first directorial outing by veteran cinematographer Ellen Kuras, is in theatres, giving all of us a chance to focus on Winslet’s dedication to her subject. Her Lee is attractive enough to be a former model (as well as the muse and lover of avant-garde artist Man Ray, among others), and she lives her life as a expat in Europe with a kind of wild gaiety. (At a co-ed picnic on the grass in the south of France, she’s casually topless). But following the rise of Hitler, she leaves her partner behind in London to work as a photojournalist, first in occupied Paris and then behind the front lines in Germany as the War in Europe grinds to a close. This is a woman who can’t take no for an answer, who’s determined, at all costs, to exercise her talents and exorcize her demons.

 Lee may speak fluent French, but she’s  American-born, and she talks with a kind of raspy croak that perhaps hints at her future death from lung cancer. (She lights up so frequently during the film that I perversely feared moviegoers might have their lungs damaged by second-hand smoke wafting from the screen.) Never one to fuss with her appearance, she stalks through military camps and the streets of war-torn cities looking disheveled and ready to take on anyone who gets in her way. Curiously, she’s on assignment for the British edition of Vogue, a magazine much more associated with fashion trends than with war coverage. Yes, partly because the top military brass try hard to keep her away from the blood and guts of battle, she turns in her share of war photos from a woman’s perspective, like snaps of the intimate laundry of female personnel hanging from a military tent’s makeshift clothesline. But she also sees—and documents—what women go through in wartime, always showing sympathy to those (even on the enemy side) who have made the mistake of  trusting male lies.

 The film’s climax is Lee’s visit to the newly discovered concentration camps and railroad boxcars in which millions of Jews, dissidents, and others breathed their last. These horrific places answer for her the question of what happened to her missing French friends as well as others who were not considered acceptable by the Nazi regime. Her close-up photos of piles of rotting corpses, although at first rejected by Vogue as overly disturbing to its potential readers, are today considered invaluable documentation of what the Nazis did to hapless civilians. In the face of those atrocities, it’s hard to blame her for a slightly morbid jest: inside Hitler’s cushy former home, she cheerily photographs herself in the buff, soaking in his private bathtub.

 But all was not fun and games within Lee’s personal and professional life. We’re reminded of this in the cutaways to an aged and much-diminished Lee (still feisty, still smoking) being interviewed in her farmhouse by a dapper young reporter. The last of these interview scenes reveals several things about Lee we had not expected, contributing to our sense of her as complicated indeed. It’s worth noting that family members—determined to preserve Lee’s legacy—were deeply involved the making of this film, about a woman we should all know better.