Quand tu me souris

Danny Wilson (Frank Sinatra) and Michael Francis (Alex Nicol) are a struggling entertainment duo. Hot head Danny keeps getting them into trouble. Joy Carroll (Shelley Winters) grabs them off the streets. She needs drinking company after a bad break. Danny hits a policeman and the guys get arrested. Joy bails them out and gets them jobs in a nightclub owned by gangster Nick Driscoll (Raymond Burr).

This movie is going all out on Sinatra's crooning. His real stardom helps although in his post-war real life, he did fall into a small dip. This has a lot of old classics. Winters is playing the sexy dame but she does it with force. She surprises me with some sassy singing. Notoriously, she and Sinatra had a big dust up during the filming. One doesn't really sense the animosity although their romantic chemistry is not that great. Winters could never do that demure lovey-dovey romantic stuff that well. It's not really in her bag of tricks. The movie takes a hard turn into gangster violence which doesn't really fit. Sinatra's big fight scene before that is his opponent laughing at his weak punches. Sinatra is not really the hard hitting type. The movie is a mishmash of elements. Some of them like Sinatra's singing is great. Some others are ill-fitting. All in all, it's an interesting intersection for these two legendary entertainers.