Melodrama seems the logical next step for Minelli after he had effectively exhausted the great MGM Musical genre with Gigi in 1958. With Some Came Running a darker tone which had become evident in earlier musicals like The Band Wagon and American in Paris comes to the fore in his great cycle of melodramas including the magnificent Two Weeks in Another Town (unreleased on DVD.)

Some Came Running is perhaps the first of the Sinatra "Rat Pack" movies with Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine joining forces with Sinatra in what here proves a pivotal psychological ménage. Anyone who thought Dino couldn't act will have to re-view this and Rio Bravo for a real study in grace, delivery and physicality. Frank's first scene with Dino in the bar looks deliciously like a first take - and runs for maximum length (over a minute) - you can't help noticing Sinatra has trouble looking Dean in the eye for the first half dozen exchanges, and the two actors barely manage to stop little bits of physical business - it's clearly a nascent moment for these guys in a movie together.

Fans of Godard's Contempt/Le Mepris will of course recognize Godard's hommage to Dino in the scene of Michel Piccoli in the bathtub reading the original James Jones novel. In a vaguely similar scene in Minelli's picture Dino appears in boxer shorts and singlet at breakfast shaving and pouring himself a breakfast Whisky.

Some Came Running takes the literal parameters of "Melodrama" - music and drama - and like Sirk or Visconti he laces the seemingly naturalistic drama of the screenplay with operatic strength emotion and intensity. Through the performances and most magnificently through his superbly rendered 'Scope mise en scène.

David Hare