Sinatra is a WW2 vet and writer who returns to his hometown and has to deal with smalltown hipocricy. Also starring Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine, directed by Vincente Minnelli.Gotta love the 50s films! The whole look of Hollywood films at the time: the cinemascope, the colours, the melodrama! This is the first Minnelli film I've seen. I should try to find more of his films. The same with Douglas Sirk; I think I've only seen Imitation of Life. Anyway, Sinatra is very good in this film. He had a certain worldweariness that fits the character. The exteriors seem to be mostly shot on location, so it gives a more real feeling than if it had been done on the backlot. The images are carefully composed, in long takes - there are none of the over the shoulder shots you see in modern films - with few closeups. So it looks great, but the images also feel a bit too small on my tv screen; it's a movie that probably should be seen in a cinema.
It is a great melodrama with that terrific climax. I would recommend Minnelli's 'Designing Woman' in 1957, a very chic comedy, as is his 1958 'The Reluctant Debutante' (set in London but filmed in Paris, with great roles for Rex Harrison and his wife Kay Kendall, that wonderful comedienne who died too young (in 1959), and of course his 1953 musical "The Bandwagon" - full of those Minnelli touches and colours - lots of yellow and red.
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen this one, but looks great.
ReplyDeleteIf you love 50s colors, melodrama, and cinemascope, then the two must-sees by Sirk are Written on the Wind (wild and lurid, with a violent color scheme full of brash and bold reds) and All That Heaven Allows (a wintry woodsy weeper, with a beautifully frigid color palate of whites and blues).
Thanks for the recommendations! I've already ordered Lust For Life, Minnelli's film about Van Gogh.
ReplyDeleteI'd go for The Bad and the Beautiful. Saw it at a cinema in Paris some years ago and, though I don't remember the details of why, I do remember I loved it.
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