The Man With the Golden Arm
The Man With the Golden Arm
Directed by Otto Preminger
Photographed by Sam Laevitt
1955
Starring: Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Eleanor Parker
I first found out about Preminger after watching Laura for the first time. Recently I watched the film noir again and found it so exquisite that I decided to do my research in regards to more movies by the remarkable visionary. To my cinephile shame, I had never even heard of his masterpiece The Man With the Golden Arm starring Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine. Machine is a recovered heroin addict who just got released into his old environment from prison after serving a couple of months. The film deals with the hardships of staying clean when pressure is building from all sides. Machine wants to pursue his dream as a drummer for a jazz band but his old drug dealer and boss might get in the way of that. Preminger excels at slowly showing us the steam building up slowly inside of Frankie. Eleanor Parker plays Zosh, Frankie's wife whose sole purpose is to guilt trip him into staying with her forever, due to a car accident they had when Frankie was driving drunk. Zosh is a different kind of evil however, selfish like all villains, but way more cruel. She acts as a paraplegic to hold Frankie back. The film's soundtrack is extremely admirable and exudes elegance. Composed and performed by Elmer Bernstein, this jazz treasure truly boosts and pushes forward the picture's narrative. The scene when Frankie finally succumbs to his old habits and goes to his dealer's house for a hit is a prime example of the prefect harmony between visuals and music. The music deepens and intensifies as Frankie gets closer to taking that hit, and when he finally does, the camera dollies into his eyes faster than a springbok trying to outrun its predator, the music peaks like the everest, enticing. This scene makes us feel almost as euphoric as Frankie does in his morphine-induced trance, we see the intensity in his eyes and I might even argue a bit of instant regret, but what matters is that we're feeling what he's feeling, and that's all Preminger's work. This scene is definitely a difficult scene to watch, I could only imagine the brouhaha that accompanied it during 1955. The film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards.
