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Otto Preminger: Golden Arm
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Preminger is usually dismissed by critic and they usually point to Laura, his wonderful film noir starring Gene Tierney as his one good film. And while it’s hard to defend bloated misfires like Hurry Sundown, Skidoo and Rosebud, other films like Advise and Consent (one of the best films about politics ever), Anatomy of o Murder (a terrific courtroom drama), Bunny Lake Is Missing (a neglected enjoyably bizarre mystery) are just sensational. Preminger’s fearless fights against censorship (The Moon Is Blue, Man With the Golden Arm) were groundbreaking. But his wild temper and legendary fights with his actors dubbed him “Otto the Terrible†by the press and overshadowed his talent as a director.
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Preminger, who was never the most comfortable director of comedy films, nonetheless dared to create a cutting-edge movie that unapologetically embraced the narcotized elements of society. Whereas previous movies looked upon drugs as an evil (most memorably Preminger�s own �The Man with the Golden Arm�), �Skidoo� happily ingested the once-taboo substances. Furthermore, Preminger made rather strange decisions in casting the leading roles � and the presence of the unlikely stars only added to the craziness.
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Preminger delighted in challenging authority, a quality that often led to clashes with studio executives and censors. In the early 1950s, Preminger formed his own production company, and as an independent producer he became known for taking on controversial topics. He explored the themes of sexual promiscuity, heroin addiction and rape in such films as “The Moon Is Blue,” “The Man with the Golden Arm,” and “Anatomy of a Murder.” He ... maintained his connection to theater by directing film adaptations of stage productions, including the black-cast musicals “Carmen Jones” and “Porgy and Bess.”
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Preminger launched his career as an independent producer-director with the comedy The Moon Is Blue (1953), released without the Production Code's Seal of Approval (withheld on the grounds of supposedly risqué dialogue, including the word "virgin"). He flouted Hollywood censorship again by filming The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Nelson Algren's novel about a heroin addict.
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The Hirsch biography—along with a twenty-three-film career retrospective currently unspooling at Film Forum in New York City—represents the latest attempt to rehabilitate Preminger's legacy. (The director Peter Bogdanovich and the critic Andrew Sarris have long been flagbearers.) As Hirsch sees it, the most striking aspect of Preminger's life was his willingness to go where no other director would dare to tread. In his films, he broke every taboo he could reasonably break, going head-to-head with the Production Code Administration on a half-dozen occasions over almost every conceivable kind of transgression. He built mainstream entertainment out of heroin addiction (The Man With the Golden Arm), put a gay bar on the American screen for the first time since the rise of the Hayes code (in the Washington procedural Advise and Consent), decried rape, poverty, and the misdirection of justice (Anatomy of a Murder), explored black sexuality (Porgy and Bess), took on the Ku Klux Klan in their own territory (in the Louisiana-shot interracial romance Hurry Sundown)—and, of course, he broke the blacklist, which may be his greatest achievement.
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Preminger's later films would be directed with one eye on the camera and the other on publicity -- he loved breaking taboos, particularly if it brought headlines. So "The Moon Is Blue" flouted the Production Code with words like "virgin," and "Anatomy of a Murder" had James Stewart graphically question a rape victim, and "The Man With the Golden Arm" dared show drug addiction.
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