Review: The Man With The Golden Arm
Blu-ray: The Man With The Golden Arm (1955)
Ex-junkie Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra) is released from prison and nicknamed “The Man with the Golden Arm” for his skill in dealing cards, hopes to give up his old life of crime and make a new career as a jazz drummer. But he eventually gets sucked back into his old ways…
I can’t imagine what audiences would have thought of this film when it was released in 1955 as this film certainly doesn’t shy away from a harrowing portrayal of extreme poverty, hopelessness, and addiction.
A 40 year old Sinatra gives a career best performance as the world weary, fragile Frankie, living with his paraplegic, nagging wife Zosch (Eleanor Parker) who doesn’t believe he can go straight, and doesn’t really WANT him to. She wants him back to dealing cards, even if it means he will soon get hooked on drugs again. Her fear of him leaving her is palpable, and although Parker plays her part somewhat hysterically, this is needed for the character. Zosch is in a wheelchair after being injured in a car crash while being driven by Frankie, and constantly reminds him of this, compounding his sense of his guilt. She conceals the fact that she is fully recovered in order to keep Frankie from leaving her for the woman he really loves, Molly (Kim Novak).
Novak plays ‘put upon’ Molly who through several scenes shows how easily she is manipulated by the men in her life (giving them money etc), while holding a torch for Frankie who won’t leave his wife and ‘make a fool of her’ because she’s disabled. Molly unconditionally supports and believes in Frankie and takes him into her home to allow him to go cold turkey to come off drugs while on the run from the police. Novak’s performance is the opposite of Parker’s; she is understated, quiet and mostly exudes a sense of hurt and she makes a good combination with Sinatra.
Arnold Stang is also excellent as Frankie’s dog-stealing sidekick; ‘Sparrow’, and Darren McGavin brings a sense of self-satisfied, superior menace to the role of drug dealer Louie
The look of the film is stylised and artificial, and this helps to create the film’s almost nightmarish and dirty, lurid quality. There is little possibility of escape for anyone, and as Frankie finds himself back in the trap and desperate for a fix, Bernstein’s music starts to build to a crescendo of jazz-pain.
Sixty years on The Man With the Golden Arm is still a powerful depiction of addiction and loneliness, and a film where all the different elements, from the sets to that insistent, driving music, hold together to underline those themes in unforgettable style.
Review by Tina (co-host of 60 Minutes With) from a disc kindly supplied by Network On Air.
