I've always believed that your surroundings reflect the quality of your life, and in the case of Frank Sinatra, he is in desperate need to start fresh away from the slime of his old neighborhood and the buzzing flies of human waste that surround him. He's a junkie, swallowed whole by the monkey on his back, and unable to function without it, even after six months of rehab.
The people in his life are of little help, and while it is his responsibility to get off the stuff (heroine it is presumed), they really don't seem to want him to be cured for various reasons of their own. There's his wheelchair bound wife Eleanor Parker, trying to suppress his dreams of becoming a professional drum player in order to hold on to him tighter, his loser pal Arnold Stang who seems to attract bad luck everywhere he goes, and most obviously, his dealer Darren McGavin who passive/aggressively works on destroying what he went through in rehab.
The only good person surrounding his pathetic existence is the equally troubled Kim Novak, stuck in a wretched marriage with a drunk. Smaller roles are filled brilliantly, particularly Diro Merande as the aging neighbor, involved in everybody's business, and perhaps an instigator of many problems. Each character has a huge back story attached without even words in the script, a testimony to the writer's attentions to details.
A sleazy metropolis atmosphere surrounds him, dramatized even more by that brilliant Elmer Bernstein score which was groundbreaking in its day and still swings in the present. Brilliant direction by Otto Preminger and that fabulous Saul Bass logo drawing remind me viewer that behind those streets paved with gold are alley ways covered in decades of misery and inhumanity.
The people in his life are of little help, and while it is his responsibility to get off the stuff (heroine it is presumed), they really don't seem to want him to be cured for various reasons of their own. There's his wheelchair bound wife Eleanor Parker, trying to suppress his dreams of becoming a professional drum player in order to hold on to him tighter, his loser pal Arnold Stang who seems to attract bad luck everywhere he goes, and most obviously, his dealer Darren McGavin who passive/aggressively works on destroying what he went through in rehab.
The only good person surrounding his pathetic existence is the equally troubled Kim Novak, stuck in a wretched marriage with a drunk. Smaller roles are filled brilliantly, particularly Diro Merande as the aging neighbor, involved in everybody's business, and perhaps an instigator of many problems. Each character has a huge back story attached without even words in the script, a testimony to the writer's attentions to details.
A sleazy metropolis atmosphere surrounds him, dramatized even more by that brilliant Elmer Bernstein score which was groundbreaking in its day and still swings in the present. Brilliant direction by Otto Preminger and that fabulous Saul Bass logo drawing remind me viewer that behind those streets paved with gold are alley ways covered in decades of misery and inhumanity.