Review of The Man with the Golden Arm by Preminger

I'm writing a screenplay about the resurgence of heroin on the streets of America, particularly in the Northeast. I'm combining the personal with the political to produce a screenplay that deals with the ongoing epidemic and the response to it. The screenplay is based around my home city of Binghamton, NY and the 81 North corridor that includes Syracuse and Scranton. Yet the heroin epidemic is not limited to those places. It is, perhaps, even more severe in places in Massachusetts and Vermont. The news coverage has been comprehensive and police are better equipped to deal with the problem. But, the drug keeps coming into the US and so far the problem has not been fully addressed. So, my screenplay is depiction of the drama that has played out here and taken the lives of two of my friends and one of my old teammates from teener league baseball. I felt their stories needed to be told. This epidemic needs to be halted.

The film The Man with the Golden Arm deals with the struggles with addiction that the character of Frankie deals with. As the film opens he has just returned from a clinic where he has received treatment and is now clean. Frankie comes back to his wife who is disabled and that foreshadows is remission to heroin and a gambler's life. Contrary to what I thought the "golden arm" doesn't have anything to do with heroin. It refers to Frankie's talent as a card shark.

I was most concerned with the depictions of addiction that beset Frankie. When he relapses for the first time I cringed watching him walk into the heroin dealer's place to get a fix. The music is rousing and when the lampshade is pulled down, you know that Frankie has given in to his addiction. It is a sad, bitter scene. It isn't until he meets up with Kim Novak at her apartment that Frankie is freed from heroin. In a great scene, albeit tragic, Sinatra goes through the struggles of withdrawal and comes out alive only to be accused of murder. The story climaxes when Frankie's wife is revealed to be a phony and the murderer of the heroin dealer. The film ends with Sinatra and Novak walking out of the urban area presumably to a better fate then what was previously in store for them if they remained in ghetto.

I had seen this film at MOMA's exhibition about Jazz in film when I was living in NYC. It was just as powerful then the first time I saw it as when I viewed on VOD on my home computer. It also narratively illustrates the heroin epidemic of the 40s and 50s. Sinatra is an urbanite jazz muscisian who is struggling to survive in the city and talks of moving out, but he just can't kick his habit of gambling and using heroin. This was indicative of the culture that surround heroin in the 40s and 50s when users were artistic types who lived in cities.

This film has a rather upbeat ending. The woman who was trapping Sinatra gets arrested and Frankie is free to leave with Novak and start a new life. It shows that addiction can be overcome. There is a way out of places like the one Frankie and Novak lived in and made a meager living..

This was a great film Perhaps the classic film about heroin addiction. It made Sinatra a bonnafied star and it was also Novak's break which led to Vertigo. It's too bad Novak couldn't find any roles later on her career. I thought she put in a great performance in this film. I"m sure I'll come across this film again.