For Otto Preminger’s film about a Chicago card dealer (Frank Sinatra) who falls victim to heroin addiction, then tries to get the monkey off his back, Elmer Bernstein came up with a powerful, pioneering concoction of cool jazz, big band and the Hollywood symphonic style. The score sets a bunch of moods—tension, anxiety, the grand swagger of being a cool guy in a tough town—with varied orchestrations and memorable melodies. How memorable? I haven’t seen the film (also highly recommended) in 30 years, yet a half-dozen tunes from Bernstein’s score still lodge in my brain. I’m humming one now and—without the aid of any drug—man, do I feel juiced!
All-TIME 100 Movies
TIME's Richard Corliss updates our All-TIME 100 list of the greatest films made since 1923 — the beginning of TIME — with 20 new entries
The Man With the Golden Arm
Full List
Behind the List
A - C
- Aguirre: The Wrath of God
- The Apu Trilogy
- The Awful Truth
- Baby Face
- Bande à part
- Barry Lyndon
- Berlin Alexanderplatz
- Blade Runner
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Brazil
- Bride of Frankenstein
- Camille
- Casablanca
- Charade
- Children of Paradise
- Chinatown
- Chungking Express
- Citizen Kane
- City Lights
- City of God
- Closely Watched Trains
- The Crime of Monsieur Lange
- The Crowd
D - F
G - J
K - M
N - P
Q - S
T - Z
Great Performances
Guilty Pleasures
- Gone With the Wind, 1939, Victor Fleming, U.S.
- Tenth Avenue Angel, 1949, Roy Rowland, U.S.
- Sailor Beware, 1951, Hal Walker, U.S.
- Diabolique (Les Diaboliques), 1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot, France
- School Girl, 1971, David Reberg, U.S
- There’s Something About Mary,1998, Bobby and Peter Farrelly, U.S.
- Anatomy of a Murder, 1959, Otto Preminger, U.S.
- Gun Crazy, 1949, Joseph H. Lewis, U.S.
- The Incredible Shrinking Man, 1957, Jack Arnold, U.S.
- Joe Versus the Volcano, 1990, John Patrick Shanley, U.S.
10 Best Soundtracks
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