Frank Sinatra stars as the prodigal son who returns, disillusioned, to his small-town home two years after the war to find it exactly as he left it. He seeks solace in the honky-tonk life along with his disreputable buddy Dean Martin; Shirley MacLaine, the wonderfully human barfly who loves him; and the schoolteacher, Martha Hyer, on whom he sets his sights.
“Sirk's dictum of ‘painting with the camera' is nowhere more true than in Minnelli's 1959 melodramatic tapestry. Beyond the usual expectations of a great film--that every composition, camera movement and cut is of an unusually cohesive and arresting power--Minnelli as well tosses in playful and liberating options. An example: during Sinatra and Hyer's languorously romantic walk in already non-judgmental Long Shot, suddenly in the distance looms a smokestack-spewing factory/plant/mill rudely disrupting the idyllic surroundings. No cut to--that lesser minds would utilize--just a filling out of the CinemaScope frame. The idea works as a metaphor for the couple's sexual tensions brewing to the surface, as a commentary on the encroachment of industry (or reality) to their dream stance, but as well, and perhaps most importantly, as a glorious, celebratory image of beauty and strength. In Minnelli images must be weighed and considered and not disposed of smugly. Everyone can ‘get' the lurid lighting of the carnival merry-go-round dancing in constrictive circles about the crazed killer's head as the camera plunges down to its below-eye-level exclamation point. But less easily assimilable are the flexible relationships among a variety of figures strewn across the cinematic landscape, like so much accumulation of evidence, that compose most of the images of this film. Here the passion and humor of Minnelli's intent require a sharp eye and an open attitude to register that all these characters have their reasons.” Warren Sonbert