Your Movie Library
Cast
- Frank SinatraFrankie Machine
- Eleanor ParkerZosch Machine
- Kim NovakMolly
- Arnold StangSparrow
- Darren McGavinLouie
- Robert StraussSchwiefka
- John ConteDrunky
- Doro MerandeVi
- George E. StoneSam Markette
- George MathewsWilliams
Recommendations
- 90
Variety
Clinical in its probing of the agonies, this is a gripping, fascinating film, expertly produced and directed and performed with marked conviction by Frank Sinatra as the drug slave. - 88
LarsenOnFilm
Director Otto Preminger emphasizes the lurid whenever he can – the neon signs, the smoky interiors, the insinuating bass on the soundtrack – so that the movie plays like a blurry, bleary night-on-its-way-to-morning. Only Sinatra’s talent is clear. - 83
Entertainment Weekly
Though director Otto Preminger’s decision to use an RKO set instead of Chicago locations initially jars, he makes it work, amping up the claustrophobic tension in beautifully choreographed long takes. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Otto Preminger defied the Code with this pioneering look at drug addiction, featuring a stylish rendering of the post-war hipster milieu, a crisp jazz soundtrack, and a remarkable Sinatra. - 70
The New Yorker
Frank Sinatra’s performance is pure gold, but the director, Otto Preminger, goes for sensationalism; the film is effective, but in a garish, hyperbolic, and dated way. - 60
Chicago Reader
The tension is intriguing and expressive (perhaps this is what Beineix had in mind for The Moon in the Gutter), though the unstable mixture is clearly limited as a sustainable style. - 60
Empire
More Damon Runyan than Irvine Welsh, but as entertaining as it is important. - 60
The New Republic
The film is a pretty good picture show, as we used to say, but anyone who has read Nelson Algren’s wonderfully poetic novel is likely to make invidious comparisons and be otherwise distracted, particularly when the film strives to narrow itself to a problem of drug addiction.
