Directed by:
Otto PremingerCinematography:
Sam LeavittComposer:
Elmer BernsteinCast:
Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang, Darren McGavin, Robert Strauss, John Conte, George E. Stone, Gordon Mitchell, Leonard Bremen (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
Frank Sinatra, as "Frankie", has just gotten out of a drug treatment program and returns to his squalid Chicago haunts. Unable to land a job as a musician he resumes as dealer in a smalltime floating poker game. Being back in the world that first led him to addiction eventually claims him again. Eleanor Parker is a pathetic figure as his wife, pretending to be crippled for the sole purpose of making Sinatra stay by her side. Kim Novak is the sexy downstairs neighbor who helps him kick the habit for a second time. This stark and powerful drama gave Frank Sinatra one of his signature roles as the junkie whose aspirations are constantly submerged in an agonizing addiction. Preminger's choice of another "taboo" subject (drug addiction) demonstrates his courage in taking on the Hollywood establishment of the 1950's. The film, set to a memorable jazz score by Elmer Bernstein, is a tough, gritty story about a world peopled by losers and loners. (Ignite Films)
(more)Reviews (1)
Due to its altogether conciliatory ending, The Man with a Golden Arm is a much less drastic look beneath the surface of the post-war American idyll than that offered by the initial films of the New York-based New American Cinema Group (Clarke, Cassavetes), but it is still an impressive and historically significant “film about a problem”. Among other things, the film’s release without PCA approval brought about the first revision of the Production Code in decades and, from 1956 onwards, Hollywood productions were newly allowed to depict narcotics (to a limited extent), for example. 80%
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