The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

Otto Preminger made several movies as a director for Fox during the 40s and 50s but he always seemed to want to make movies that showed subjects that the censors would not approve. Finally, Preminger went out on his own and became one of the first independent film producers. He released The Man with the Golden Arm through United Artists and didn’t even try to appease the Hayes Office when they refused to issue a seal of approval. He released the movie anyway and the censors were weakened and never were able to exercise the absolute authority they had previously wielded.

The Man with the Golden Arm is a story about heroin addiction, a subject still touchy today and all but unmentionable in 1955. The movie takes place in Chicago and is set in a seedy area whose social center is a bar where all the neighborhood men hang out. This includes the local gambling kings and drug pushers in and among the guys who are just looking for a couple of beers to quench their thirst and kill a few hours out of their boring lives.

Except for a few exterior shots, everything takes place indoors in a few sets indicating the bar and the apartments of the characters. Frank Sinatra is a newly released prisoner who had been cured of heroin addiction while serving his sentence. He returns to the bar and is greeted by his friends and proudly shows off his new drum set given as a gift by his fellow prisoners. A former illegal card dealer he is now going to be a professional drummer – "This arm is made of pure gold," he says. He also meets the local pusher (Darren McGavin) and his old boss Schwiefka (Robert Strauss) who still runs the illegal card game.

When he finds Sinatra has no interest in returning to the illegal gambling trade, Strauss gets his crooked police to arrest Sinatra, then bails him out so he "owes" him a favor. Sinatra has a good reason to steer clear of the old haunts – "the monkey is gone," he says, but through the pressures laid on him by the associates and his dependent invalid wife (Eleanor Parker) who maintains the fiction of paralysis to keep her hold on Sinatra, his resolve soon crumbles and he is soon making appointments with the monkey.

As you may note, everybody in the screenplay is conning everybody else with Frank the only one who is not onto the joke. The gambler is showing him he is his friend and benefactor; the drug dealer is showing him he will let him try the monkey for free; his wife is pretending she is paralyzed – all to keep Frank in his place and let them depend on him. It takes the tough love of his neighbor the sultry Kim Novak who helps him beat the monkey cold turkey in some harrowing scenes that have hardly been improved upon in movies since. The movie does play out with all loose ends rather conveniently tied off, but all in all it is an effective story that still holds a fair amount of interest.

Sinatra did a fine job as the protagonist Frankie Machine. Eleanor Parker (Detective Story) also was good in her limited role. Arnold Stang got a fairly meaty part as Sinatra's sidekick. Darren McGavin was very creepy in his against type character of the pusher, while Kim Novak, with her unemotional delivery but incredible figure really was a treat for the eyes. She also delivered some good advice in her wooden acting style. The moving camera with its long takes was under the auspices of cinematographer Joseph LaShelle and the heart stopping jazz score was by none other than the master Elmer Bernstein; one of the better modern jazz scores in film history, in my view.

The DVD is by Delta, a public domain publisher, and is available for about $6.00. The image is fairly good with a little softness and there are no other extra features but it s a good movie for film noir fans, film history buffs, or fans of Frank Sinatra.

Another fine drama about addiction is the highly watchable The Lost Weekend

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV