User Reviews

*** Spoiler in fifth paragraph *** This was an amazingly frank (uh-huh, uh-huh) picture for 1955. Otto Preminger and Carlyle Productions took a chance by making it, the Motion Picture Association of America balked at certifying a film that openly shows a junky jabbing a syringe full of heroin into his arm. Frank Sinatra took a chance both on playing an addicted musician and at falling flat on his face in a role that required at least twice as much acting as he'd ever done. All in all these gambles paid off, the movie is a classic, though it's not perfect.

Nelson Algren's novel may be great, but it has far too much going on to fit comfortably into a two hour movie 'The Man with the Golden Arm' is 119 minutes and often feels much longer. However, in my opinion it's not just Frankie Machine (Sinatra) that makes the film but the other characters and their sub-plots, all involving Frankie. Ultimately it's not just Frankie who has the addiction, everyone and everything seems to be dependent on him and he feels it keenly. When the pressure gets to be too much the drums start pounding on the soundtrack and Frankie steps across the street with his well-dressed "friend" Louie.

It's an exaggeration to say that Frank Sinatra's music career was ever really in the doldrums, but in the early 50's he was in limbo between his days touring with big bands and the Las Vegas era. 'From Here to Eternity' established him as a serious actor and his career as a singer rebounded as well, but 'The Man with the Golden Arm' was still a significant challenge, the whole show sinks or swims with his performance. He pulls it off with such skill that for several minutes at a time I forgot I was watching Frank Sinatra, he must have known junky musicians and exploited that knowledge to the utmost.

Set side by side with Billy Wilder's masterpiece 'The Lost Weekend' there is more emphasis on the sociological causes of addiction in 'The Man with the Golden Arm.' Whereas Don Birnem (Ray Milland in 'The Lost Weekend') seems to struggle mostly against himself, Frankie Machine is beset by external forces and he takes refuge in the needle. Neither approach is wholly right or wrong, mostly because addiction is impossible to fully explain, but it seems like this film might have benefited from a little more insight into Frankie's internal struggle.

*** Spoiler *** One of the problems I have with this film is the clichéd reliance on "quitting cold turkey." I realize that 'The Man with the Golden Arm' was probably setting the trend rather than following it but that doesn't make it any better. In the beginning of the movie Frankie has to all appearances kicked his habit with the help of a doctor and a treatment facility of some sort. Naturally the drama of the film requires that he backslide, but I found the All-American ideal that a man has to face his problems alone (or maybe with the help of a good woman) out of place here. Going cold turkey and riding off into the sunset with Kim Novak seemed too unrealistic. The end of 'The Lost Weekend' was similar but in my opinion was a little less rosy.

(Mild Spoilers) Frankie Machine had been dealt a bad hand in life. A card dealer at an illegal gambling den in his Chicago neighborhood he was busted when the joint was raided by the cops and given six months in jail.

While behind bars Frankie was treated for his heroin addiction at the prisons hospital and learned how to play the drums as part of his rehabilitation program. Now out of prison and back in his old neighborhood Frankie is trying to put his life back together by getting a union card in the Musicians Union and then a job as a drummer in a band and put his old life behind him but instead it catches up with Frankie in no time at all in "The Man with the Golden Arm".

Otto Preminger's ground-breaking 1955 film about heroin addiction with Frank Sinatra giving the performance of his life as the drug addicted card sharp Frankie Machine, the Man with the Golden Arm. Frankie tries to getaway from the life that he lead but has this monkey or, better yet, gorilla on his back that just won't let him. Soild performances by the entire supporting cast starting with Frankie's friend Sparrow, Arnold Stang. Sparrows attempt to get Frankie back on his feet by shoplifting a suit of clothes for him ends up putting him and Frankie in the slammer, and almost back to prison, until his former boss at the gambling den Schwiefka bailed him out.

There's Frankie's psychically as well as emotionally crippled wife Zosch, Eleanor Parker, who sees that her hold on Frankie is slipping and is slowly driven to madness murder and suicide. There's Frankie's drug dealer Louie, with Darren McGavin in one of his first acting roles, who's hold on Frankie is only good as long as he stays addicted and Louie goes out of his way to make sure that he does.

There's the owner of the gambling joint that Frankie works at as it's top card dealer Schwiefka, Robert Strauss, who like Louie goes out of his way to get Frankie back to work for him even though if he's arrested again Frankie's hopes for a new and better life will go down the drain. And then there's Frankie's next-door neighbor and friend Molly, Kim Novak,who goes to almost impossible lengths to get him over his addiction by locking him up in her apartment. It's there that he goes "Cold Turkey" and almost ends up dying trying to kick the habit in one of the most harrowing sequence ever put on film.

A no holds barred movie with explosive performances by everyone involved makes "The Man with the Golden Arm" one of the great classics of realism in motion pictures coming out of the 1950's.

Frank Sinatra did so many excellent things in the world of entertainment that it's hard to single one out as the best. If I had to name the best thing he ever did, though, it would be his performance as Frankie Machine, the heroin- addicted musician and poker dealer who is saved, just barely, by the love of a good woman (played by an exceptionally babelicious Kim Novak). The "cold-turkey" scenes between Sinatra and Novak are terrifying and heartbreaking. The movie is very nearly perfect, in fact, from Saul Bass's title graphics to the ground-breaking jazz score by Elmer Bernstein. It might not be the sort of thing anyone thinks of in regard to the 1950s, but it's a must-see nevertheless.

But quite dated today. Otto Preminger made this movie without the certificate of approval that was needed then. It was enormously courageous and risky as he could have lost his investment and future.

The film is not true to the wonderful book and is unfortunately hollywoodized.

Frank Sinatra (and I've never been a fan) playing Frankie Machine, is astonishing in his performance. One forgets it is Frank up there, the level of realism he brings to the role of a jonesing drug addict has to be seen to be believed.

Kim Novak, eternally gorgeous and talented, does not disappoint in the role of the devoted outsider, always there for Frankie.

Supporting roles, particularly a young, handsome and talented Darrin Mc Gavin, are faultless.

Eleanor Parker, playing Frankie's wife, is hopelessly inept. She swings from irritating to melodramatic and is far too over the top. A forgettable performance.

The stagey, cheap settings are appalling, as if a firm gust of wind would blow the whole tacky painted cardboards over the horizon. Almost laughable at times in their tawdry cheapness.

The music was irritating, poundingly so at times. As if each nuance of the script (example: when Louie is getting Frankie his fix out of a drawer) had to be underscored at a high decibel level.

7 out of 10. Sinatra truly deserved his Oscar nomination. Worth seeing.

An interesting look at heroin addiction, lacking the power and gravitas of the boozy nightmare that was THE LOST WEEKEND, but nonetheless a well-made and well-directed film from Otto Preminger. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM sees Frank Sinatra playing an ex-con who works as a dealer in illegal card games but dreams of becoming a famous musician. Unfortunately, he's also a former heroin addict who must attempt to resist the temptation of another fix.

This kind of story tends to write itself and indeed there aren't many surprises in the narrative. Sinatra is adequate as the lead, but I found his character rather underwritten and difficult to warm to. He has a lot of negative qualities but few genuinely likable elements to his personality. Still, with a plot-driven film such as this, such lightness of characterisation is easy to overlook when the rest of the plot ingredients are so interesting.

The supporting characters are enlivened by some actors giving very good performances. Particularly fine are Kim Novak (in a dry run for VERTIGO) as the object of Sinatra's obsession and Darren McGavin (THE NIGHT STALKER) in an early part as a completely amoral drug dealer. My favourite character is the morally murky Eleanor Parker playing Sinatra's wife who has a few hidden secrets of her own; she gets all of the best scenes and is involved in the dark heart of the movie. The set-piece in which Sinatra attempts to kick the habit is dramatic, but Hackman had it beat in THE FRENCH CONNECTION 2. Still, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM is a very well made film, one that's there's no reason to dislike.

I've always believed that your surroundings reflect the quality of your life, and in the case of Frank Sinatra, he is in desperate need to start fresh away from the slime of his old neighborhood and the buzzing flies of human waste that surround him. He's a junkie, swallowed whole by the monkey on his back, and unable to function without it, even after six months of rehab.

The people in his life are of little help, and while it is his responsibility to get off the stuff (heroine it is presumed), they really don't seem to want him to be cured for various reasons of their own. There's his wheelchair bound wife Eleanor Parker, trying to suppress his dreams of becoming a professional drum player in order to hold on to him tighter, his loser pal Arnold Stang who seems to attract bad luck everywhere he goes, and most obviously, his dealer Darren McGavin who passive/aggressively works on destroying what he went through in rehab.

The only good person surrounding his pathetic existence is the equally troubled Kim Novak, stuck in a wretched marriage with a drunk. Smaller roles are filled brilliantly, particularly Diro Merande as the aging neighbor, involved in everybody's business, and perhaps an instigator of many problems. Each character has a huge back story attached without even words in the script, a testimony to the writer's attentions to details.

A sleazy metropolis atmosphere surrounds him, dramatized even more by that brilliant Elmer Bernstein score which was groundbreaking in its day and still swings in the present. Brilliant direction by Otto Preminger and that fabulous Saul Bass logo drawing remind me viewer that behind those streets paved with gold are alley ways covered in decades of misery and inhumanity.

Frank Sinatra received an Academy Award nomination for his Frankie Machine role in this film. Eleanor Parker didn't receive a nomination for her role as Zosh Machine. Yet she stole every scene in which she appeared in "The Man with the Golden Arm." Parker is one of those very good – perhaps "great" Hollywood actresses who never won an Oscar. She turned in some great performances and was nominated three times. She should have received a nomination for this film, as she did for "Interrupted Melody" of the same year.

Sinatra's performance was very good. Critics and reviewers especially liked his scenes of withdrawal from cocaine. This was a groundbreaking film by Otto Preminger, a director who liked to break ground and challenge the industry. No one before had shown scenes of heavy drug addiction. So, it was new to most audiences then. Of course, since that time, we've seen many more depictions of drug addiction, its effects, treatment, withdrawal and recovery. Withdrawal differs between substances and among individuals. Alcohol and heroin addiction withdrawal often have delirium tremens (DTs), but Cocaine withdrawal doesn't. More people today have experiences of drug and alcohol addiction and withdrawal. Compared to later films (e.g., "Days of Wine and Roses" in 1962), the withdrawal scenes in this film seem almost tame. Still, it was a good performance for a first public airing of drug use.

All of the cast are very good. Parker's role is so good as the self- centered, deceitful schizophrenic that viewers learn to hate her when we find out her secret; then to pity her. Darren McGavin is so good as Louie that we despise him immediately. Arnold Stang is excellent as Sparrow, Robert Strauss is very good as Schiefka, and Kim Novak is perfect as the other girl – the one who cares about Frankie and his recovery and who won't enable his addiction.

It's a good, if mild and cleaned up look at the underworld of drug use. And, this is one that has a happy ending – well, for most.