This stunning melodrama is a brilliant adaptation of James (From Here to Eternity) Jones’ semi-autobiographical novel. Plotting the return of a disillusioned writer to his home town following service in the army during WWII, Some Came Running is a no-holds-barred expose of small-town hypocrisy. One of director Vincente Minnelli’s finest films (sandwiched between Gigi and Home from the Hill), it uses Technicolor and CinemaScope to great effect, presenting a lavish and yet somehow rotten spectacle of adults loving, hating and betraying each other. Some Came Running features the on-screen debut of Sinatra’s nascent Rat Pack, with his own understated central performance allowing his co-stars, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine, to steal the film from under him. All in all, Minnelli’s magnificent melodrama marked a watershed in Sinatra’s career and is the only great piece of work the Rat Pack ever did together. Even Jean-Luc Godard was impressed, as evidenced by his amusing tribute to the film in Le Mepris.