In the olden days you went to Cinemateca half expecting that the projector might break down and the film would struggle to get to the end. Those days have gone, just like the old salas have gone, but this screening was a throwback. Half way through, the film gave up the ghost, and even though valiant efforts were made to resuscitate it, I ended up watching the final hour in a much better print on YouTube.
Given all this, it’s worth noting that the screening was part of a season of alternative films that managed to sneak under the radar. Preminger’s Chicago, full of sleaze balls, femmes fatales, and flop houses, not to mention the junk, is beautifully realised. It feels like something out of Gorky, the lower depths, a place where the crushing inevitability of poverty is bound to get you in the end. In the midst of this, Sinatra gives a bravura performance, part junkie, part matinee idol. The operatic notes of the direction clearly play to his hand, but we perceive another man in his performance to the smooth entertainer he became. The desperation of his character, Frankie Machine, is completely credible, which perhaps hints at another life Sinatra might have lived had the gods not smiled on him.
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