text: Lots of scenes and dialogue are flat-out goofy, but when you add it all up, i.e. Machine's daily cycle from depressing walkup to depressing bar to depressing burlesque hall to depressing smoke-filled poker games and back home again, you get a weird sense that somebody, somewhere is trying to give a faithful depiction of the junkie's life circa-1955. Whether it's Sinatra, who obviously would have bumped up against this type of character growing up in Hoboken and working in numerous bands, or Preminger, who uses the soundtrack and the Frankie-Zosch subtext to slip the addict's interior worldview past the Hays Code cage, you get a good companion piece to On the Waterfront, which was filmed almost exactly the same time. Sort of a faux-realist work that leaves you realistically wondering how deep the drug culture is embedded in American life.