Good movie but grossly overrated

From my favorite movies..

Excellent but underrated film

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

If you only see one Frank Sinatra movie in your lifetime, watch The Man with the Golden Arm. Not only was it the best performance of his acting career, but Frankie himself always felt he should have won his Oscar for this film, instead of From Here to Eternity. I wholeheartedly agree.Frankie plays "Frankie Machine", a former heroin addict and card dealer who returns to his hometown after a stint in jail. While he's been away, his wheelchair-bound wife, Eleanor Parker, has been taken care of by his drug dealer, Darren McGavin, who expects Frankie to show his gratitude now that he's returned. But Frankie wants a new life, a clean life. As he struggles to fight intense temptation, he learns how hard it is to stay sober.Kim Novak is inarguably beautiful, and I love her in Picnic, so I don't want to dis her that much. Sufficed to say, her performance was the only lackluster one in the film. Darren McGavin, best known for his bumbling, laughable performance in A Christmas Story, plays a wonderful villain: slimy, motivated, and convincing as he pretends to care. Eleanor Parker is unrecognizable in her haggard, desperate role. I watched The Sound of Music for the hundredth time and asked my mom, "Eleanor Parker was so pretty. Did she make any other movies?" My mom said, "She was in a movie you love: The Man with the Golden Arm!" My response was, "She was? What part did she play?" That says everything.Sometimes composers write themes within a film for specific characters, like in Ben-Hur or The Best Years of Our Lives. In Elmer Bernstein's fantastic score, Temptation itself is given a theme. Once you've heard the music to The Man with the Golden Arm, you'll never forget it. Combined with Otto Preminger's wonderfully rugged and classy directing style, whenever the music starts, you'll get goosebumps as the scene of temptation plays out. The story is heart-breaking and incredibly real.Nowadays, making movies about drugs isn't a novelty. Showing the use of heroin doesn't even shock audiences anymore. In 1955, during the reign of the Hays Code, a movie like this just wasn't made. In fact, it wasn't granted a seal of approval and wasn't allowed to be shown in some movie theaters during the release. Although there's no escaping the classic feel of Otto Preminger's masterpiece, it's just as gruesome and realistic as if it were made today. Drug use is shown, as well as the ungodly horrors of withdrawals. Every time I watch it, I still can't believe it was made in 1955—so groundbreaking! I've said before that this was Frank Sinatra's best performance, but in fact, it's one of the best screen performances of all time. Watch it. I'm sure you'll agree.Kiddy warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to some drug use and adult content, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

I haven't seen this film since 1971, but then it made e such an impression, that it stuck for life, and I felt no need to see it again, as the memory of it was sharp enough. Just for curiosity, I decided to renew its acquaintance after 44 years just to see what would happen, - and the impact was repeated and as good as new. This is probably the best junkie film ever made, in its naturalistic and actually horrific realism, with Frank Sinatra (100 years just the other day) in his best performance in the lead as the junkie with a crippled wife in a wheel- chair (Eleanor Parker, splendid acting on her part too,) and Kim Novak as the saving angel - it stands clear from the beginning that only she can save him, and she does, in also one of her best performances, actually better than in "Vertigo". The triumph however is the direction combined with the music by Elmer Bernstein. It's asphalt jungle music all the way, hard and merciless in its ruthlessly importuning rough disharmonics and nightmare style (with a few exceptions for a change), and Sinatra is even convincing as a failed drummer. Otto Preminger stands for the direction, one of many original films of his, and they are many, but this black-and-white social documentary naturalistic gutter nightmare is perhaps the one most sticking out - you recognize much of this half slum humdrum environment as he returns to it in "Porgy and Bess" three years later. In brief, it's a triumph of a film, completely naked in shocking social realism with as perfectly convincing and natural performances as in any Italian neo-realistic masterpiece. It was a perfectly enjoyable nightmare to see it again after 44 years to observe it had lost nothing of its timeless actuality - this could happen to you.

This was a fantastic, truly seminal movie at the time it was released, as it dealt with taboo subject matter (heroin addiction) deemed "unsuitable" by the Review Board and certainly outside 1955's "Father Knows Best" squeaky-clean societal norms and standards.As I watch TMWTGA for the dozenth time and note some of the career risks that were taken by the actors, I am beginning to question if Otto Preminger ever made a "bad" movie....because it seems that he always got the very best performances out of his actors. It also seems many of his movies pushed boundaries and challenged societal assertions and beliefs.How so? Well, in Preminger's "In Harm's Way"...Preminger introduces audiences to the somewhat risqué idea that not only is casual, non- committed sex "OK" in polite society, it happens quite frequently between consenting unmarried adults (operating in the harsh circumstances and environs of WWII warfare). "In Harm's Way" also included an incredibly controversial forcible-rape sequence, both violent and nasty, which results in both the attacker and the victim's committing suicide to avoid public condemnation and consequences.Or, in Preminger's "The Moon is Blue".....where two men are pursuing one woman, not for marriage, but for sex.In "The Man with the Golden Arm", moviegoers got a firsthand taste of what it really means to be an addict; the unmitigated cravings, the self-deceptions, the pains of withdrawal, the unavoidable destruction of relationships and loved ones, etc. Although Sinatra was magnificent in this movie, so was Eleanor Parker, along with great performances by Arthur Strang, and notably, Darin McGavin, who creates an especially nasty, reprehensible drug pusher who knows exactly how to pull the strings and make the addict Sinatra "dance".Although films aren't Black and White anymore, and the 1950's won't ever return, the concepts and characters in this movie still exist in full force here in present-day 2014. Just peer down a dark side-street, out behind the bowling alley, or in the parking lot of your closest seedy motel. You can find the same set of REAL players revolving around money and drugs on a corner of Your Town, USA, or any place where desperation and shattered dreams are laid bare, and pain is mitigated via the needle, the pill, the puff, or the snort.

Frank Sinatra is "The Man with the Golden Arm" in this 1955 Otto Preminger film that also stars Eleanor Parker, Darrin McGavin, Kim Novak, and Arnold Stang. Sinatra plays Frankie Machine, a heroin addict who is treated during a six month prison stay and comes home determined to start a new life as a musician.Trying to follow the advice of his doctor, he refuses his old job, that of a card dealer. However, it doesn't take long for the old pulls on him to take root. His wife Zosch, is in a wheelchair due to an accident caused by Frankie, and she's extremely clingy and needy. His girlfriend Molly (Novak) is with someone else and isn't sure she wants to be involved with him again. Louie (McGavin) is constantly on him to buy a fix, and Schwiefka (Robert Strauss), his old boss, is desperate for him to work as a dealer. Frankie fairly quickly starts using again.The setting of this film couldn't possibly be more depressing - a seedy, dirty, old neighborhood peopled with weirdos, drug dealers, and criminal types. In the midst of this, Frankie's wife plays on his guilt for the accident, and then he has to face up to the fact that he went back to his addiction.Frank Sinatra is great as the downtrodden, pathetic Frankie who wants to get a job playing the drums and takes a detour. The supporting cast is marvelous with the exception of the miscast Eleanor Parker. Parker is simply not low-class enough for the role of Zosch -- her acting is very good as always, but she's too well-spoken. This would have been an excellent role for Coleen Gray who could have captured the necessary quality beautifully.Without giving away the ending, I had a problem with it - how the truth of the situation was learned is not explained.Films about drug use in later years were much more graphic and hard-hitting. Drugs in the '50s were not as mainstream as they became, and actually, they're hardly mentioned in the movie. I'm sure this was a difficult subject to handle in 1955, and given that, Preminger did an excellent job.