Made in 1958, and set 10 years earlier, this ripe melodrama has certainly dated, but it's as good a record of postwar America's alcohol-fuelled split personality as anyone has made. The amount people drink and smoke here is staggering, particularly Frank Sinatra, who puts in a sullen performance as a soldier-cum-tortured artist returning to his hometown and stirring up diverse troubles. His Jekyll/Hyde relationship with the bottle presents two alternatives: cultured cosiness with buttoned-up schoolmistress Martha Hyer; or a life of whisky, poker and casual sexism with local gambler Dean Martin and garish floozy Shirley MacLaine. It's an intriguing parallel to Sinatra's real-life Rat Pack destiny. Minnelli orchestrates the lurid plot like a symphony, with rich, widescreen compositions, a swooning Elmer Bernstein score and an assured feel for the anxieties beneath the sunny suburban surface.