The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

It's a real shame that modern posters stick to stills and nothing else.

Directed by Otto Preminger
Written by Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer, Ben Hecht, Nelson Algren (novel)
Starring Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak



So, Frank Sinatra.  There's Sinatra as charming rogue (Ocean's Eleven, The Kissing Bandit), Sinatra as war hero (Von Ryan's Express, None but the Brave), Sinatra as stylish gumshoe with fedora at a jaunty angle (Tony Rome, Lady in Cement), and inevitably, Sinatra being musical (Anchors Aweigh, Guys and Dolls).  Sinatra as broken, hopeless junkie?  It doesn't seem to fit quite so well, does it?

Well, here we are.  Ol' Blue Eyes plays a professional card dealer, fed up of being swindled and manipulated, but too overrun with the addiction to do very much about it.  And he really does a perfectly acceptable job, too; I can't say I expected much, but I was pleasantly surprised.  It's not a spectacular performance, no-one's going to hold it up as the stand-out junkie role in cinema history.  But it was more than good enough, certainly, no cause to complain.

That said, I suppose that now, in 2011, the representation of the addiction might seem a little tame (particularly if we compare the cold turkey scene here with the rather more dramatic and brutal one in Trainspotting) - but then, this is 1955, this is Code Era, if you expect visceral reactions and babies on ceilings, you probably need to look for it elsewhere.

On the other hand, what The Man with the Golden Arm gives us is a tense, involving and very bleak drama.  I should stress bleak:  Preminger really has created something overwhelmed by negativity, a tough ride which gets grimmer and grimmer as it goes along.  You want Sinatra to be okay, for everything to work out for him, but there's scarcely a moment when you'd really believe it could.  The road downhill doesn't have many corners in it, even in the uncertain, hard-fought, cracked salvation of the ending.

I need to make a couple of final points.  Firstly, I love the graphic design of this picture, the heavily stylised - and unmistakably 50s - titles and matching, handdrawn poster.  Secondly, Elmer Bernstein's jazz score genuinely is superb, and elevates the film through the odd stumble.  And there are stumbles - The Man with the Golden Arm is no masterpiece, the story drags in places, it's not as well-paced as it could be, and losing fifteen or twenty minutes wouldn't hurt.  But, like Sinatra's acting, it's more than good enough; not great, but more than good enough.