Whatever Happened to Nelson Algren ? : Otto Preminger's Adaptation Of The Man with the Golden Arm

Abstract

This article takes issue with the predominant construction of Otto Preminger as an auteur dealing with problematic subjects and with the excessive emphasis that critics have placed upon the iconoclastic aspects of Preminger's adaptation of Nelson Algren's novel The Man with the Golden Arm (1949). These critical views owe much to the type of Preminger studies carried out in the 50s and 60s by the reviewers of the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. Because such criticism focused primarily on the cinematic specificity of film, it refused to adopt a comparative approach that would include in their assessment of Preminger the literary texts on which he based the majority of his works. In the case of The Man with the Golden Arm this neglect has been paralleled by the literary critics' lack of attention to the novel. This study recovers the missing comparative dimension and shows how the crucial changes made by Preminger for the screen adaptation reveal the conformist and conservative ideology informing the movie.