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The Man with the Golden Arm Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 12 Reviews)

Worth seeing
This movie is something else. It opens with Frankie Machine, a dealer in neighborhood poker games, returning to the old neighborhood after a stint in rehab, determined to change his life. You feel you're seeing every possible drug cliché enacted on the screen: the sleazy pusher, the addict who wants to kick but can't, the wife who enables the addiction, girlfriend who loves him enough to help him quit, the way the whole world seems to conspire to push the addict toward relapse... What's amazing is realizing this movie invented those clichés. It's definitely worth seeing.

Sinatra Acts!
To hear Frank Sinatra sing is to hear one of the most expressive voices of the last century. But in Otto Preminger's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1955), Sinatra gives a complete dramatic characterization as Frankie Machine, a "recovered" heroin addict and aspiring jazz drummer who is sadly sucked back into his old, destructive lifestyle after having been released from jail and "rehab" with high hopes for the future. Sinatra, with his trademark combination of toughness and vulnerability, shows us a decent man whose surroundings - a brood of drug dependents and dealers, an emotionally weak and clinging wife - are his downfall. It is only when those who would hold him back by keeping him a slave to the drug culture are destroyed that Frankie can go forth into the world and begin to fulfill his promise as a human being.
Because it points up human contradictions (Frankie's "golden arm" itself has three significances, two bad and one good) and involves themes of redemption and renewal, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM is (as another reviewer suggested) Shakespearean in character; it is also Shakespearean in the sense that the viewer can often see tragedy coming before the characters themselves see it. As a movie, it is a work of gritty realism typical of the 1950's; films like ON THE WATERFRONT, 12 ANGRY MEN, THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, and THE WRONG MAN also exemplify the genre. The shining, minutely detailed black-and-white photography, the stark main title sequence (designed by Saul Bass, later to design titles for Hitchcock), and the blaring, pulsating jazz score (by Elmer Bernstein, who would write a similar score for THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS) are other factors that place THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM as a prime work of `50's cinematic realism. And as a dramatization of substance abuse, it foreshadows a 1962 film about alcoholism, DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES with Jack Lemmon, which I would recommend to anyone moved by Sinatra and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM.













Disappointing DVD release
I've not seen another release of this film; but I received it today, and I am highly disappointed. The transfer is awful, apparent right from the start. Titles are blurry. Scratches and dust are visible. The video compression is muddy. Speed seems off. Dolby 5.1 is okay at best. Strange green colors are visible, most likely from compression. It's odd to see green patches on clothing, etc., in a black and white film. The main discs is only 5.7 GB, so there was clearly no need for 2 discs. All of the remaining extras would have fit. The 2 disc edition is clearly, a marketing gimmic. Avoid purchasing. May be worth renting just for some of the limited extras.

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