Sweet Smell of Success

1957 - 96 mins - Director: Alexander Mackendrick - Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis - b&w - DCP

A box-office disaster upon original release, Sweet Smell of Success is now considered one of best films of the 1950s—as well as a definitive cinematic statement on the dangers of media corruption. Burt Lancaster seethes through a thinly-veiled portrait of powerful New York gossip columnist Walter Winchell as J.J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis gives perhaps his finest performance as the two-faced, sycophantic press agent Sidney Falco. 

Some of the most dyspeptic dialogue in screen history is spewed courtesy of writers Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets, all complemented by James Wong Howe’s cinéma vérité camerawork and a brassy, propulsive score by Elmer Bernstein. Keep your eyes and ears open as put-upon jazz cat Martin Milner sits in with the legendary Chico Hamilton Quintet (Paul Horn, flute; Fred Katz, cello; John Pisano, guitar; Carson Smith, bass; Chico Hamilton, drums). The film costars Susan Harrison, Emile Meyer, and Barbara Nichols (“What am I, a bowl of fruit? A tangerine that peels in a minute?”) J. J. Hunsecker said it best: “I love this dirty town!”

CREDITS
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene, Barbara Nichols
Screenplay: Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman
Cinematographer: James Wong Howe
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Production: Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions
Original Distributor: United Artists
Presentation: DCP / b&w / 1.66:1