The Man With the Golden Arm

When Otto Preminger was willing to release his drug-addiction drama Man With the Golden Arm without the sanction of a Production Code seal, it proved to be yet another nail in the coffin of that censorial dinosaur. Based on the novel by Nelson Algren, the film stars Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine, ...more

Groundbreaking and controversial when it was first released, The Man With the Golden Arm seems relatively tame by modern standards. The sequence in which Frankie kicks drugs still has power because of the strength of Frank Sinatra's performance, and the film isn't necessarily less effective because it doesn't show explicit details of drug use (e.g., it shows Frankie's face when he injects himself instead of showing the actual needle going into his arm). However, the story is weighed down by ...more