Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Writers: Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman, Alexander Mackendrick
Photography: James Wong Howe
Music: Elmer Bernstein, Chico Hamilton Quintet
Editor: Alan Crosland Jr.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Martin Milner, Susan Harrison, Barbara Nichols, Emile Meyer, Clifford Odets, David White, Jeff Donnell
Technically, Sweet Smell of Success probably has to count as a noir, but it’s something of a lightweight one in terms of crime. The corruption runs deep and extends into the police force too, but there’s no particular foul crime—no murders. Instead it’s all about PR and newspaper columns, publicity and celebrity and making it. It’s new enough, and my memory is long enough, that it reminds me a little of scraping out freelance work from magazines and newspapers in the ‘80s. There was a PR angle to everything entertainment journalists did then, and Tony Curtis as press agent Sidney Falco, in perhaps the biggest performance of his career, is a certain ideal of the 24/7 hustler in that world. It's not about money or even power as such there, but rather about fame, recognition, adulation, as only the entertainment industry can deliver it.
I will say my memory is not long enough to remember Walter Winchell, the model for Burt Lancaster’s role as powerful gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker, but the point is quickly understood. Hunsecker wields enough clout in his column that he can make and destroy reputations and careers. He has a faint odor too of the right-wing anticommunist polemicist / crank. In this particular case, Hunsecker has opinions about who his kid sister Susan (Susan Harrison) should and should not marry. Her beau, Steve Dallas (Martin Milner, later a cop on Adam-12), is a hotshot guitarist in a jazz group otherwise played by the Chico Hamilton Quintet. But Hunsecker thinks Dallas is beneath his sister and he applies his overbearing influence to breaking them up. There’s the story. Without any obvious motivation beyond pathology, it makes Sweet Smell of Success, as Hunsecker himself notes, basically a story about “shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun.”
Technically, Sweet Smell of Success probably has to count as a noir, but it’s something of a lightweight one in terms of crime. The corruption runs deep and extends into the police force too, but there’s no particular foul crime—no murders. Instead it’s all about PR and newspaper columns, publicity and celebrity and making it. It’s new enough, and my memory is long enough, that it reminds me a little of scraping out freelance work from magazines and newspapers in the ‘80s. There was a PR angle to everything entertainment journalists did then, and Tony Curtis as press agent Sidney Falco, in perhaps the biggest performance of his career, is a certain ideal of the 24/7 hustler in that world. It's not about money or even power as such there, but rather about fame, recognition, adulation, as only the entertainment industry can deliver it.
I will say my memory is not long enough to remember Walter Winchell, the model for Burt Lancaster’s role as powerful gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker, but the point is quickly understood. Hunsecker wields enough clout in his column that he can make and destroy reputations and careers. He has a faint odor too of the right-wing anticommunist polemicist / crank. In this particular case, Hunsecker has opinions about who his kid sister Susan (Susan Harrison) should and should not marry. Her beau, Steve Dallas (Martin Milner, later a cop on Adam-12), is a hotshot guitarist in a jazz group otherwise played by the Chico Hamilton Quintet. But Hunsecker thinks Dallas is beneath his sister and he applies his overbearing influence to breaking them up. There’s the story. Without any obvious motivation beyond pathology, it makes Sweet Smell of Success, as Hunsecker himself notes, basically a story about “shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun.”
But what a fine elephant gun we have here. Shot on location in New York City, the cinematography of James Wong Howe is gritty and raw, swallowed up in harsh contrasts of black and white like the photography of Weegee (who could well have been an influence). It moves like the city itself, loud and fast, which is further emphasized by rapid-fire dialogue and the blaring, jazzy, horns-heavy score by Elmer Bernstein and Hamilton’s quintet. On one hand director and cowriter Alexander Mackendrick makes it feel almost unfinished, a kind of hurry-up low-budget job shot on the quick. Look more carefully and it’s not slapped together at all but rather only meant to feel that way in emulation of the desperate glam-damaged lives here, notably Falco’s, who spends the picture running all over the city trying to make things right in the ways that best advantage him. Like New York itself it appears he never sleeps.
Lancaster is impressive in this one, as he usually is, but his screen time is limited compared to Curtis. We don’t even hear from or see Hunsecker until 20 minutes in to a picture that’s not that long. Instead, the movie stays with Falco practically every step of the way and Curtis is absolutely up to the job: burbling up a steady stream of wheedling, fawning, pitching, mocking, pushing palaver, even as his eyes dart around the scenes sizing things up. He is constantly in motion. He never wavers from his goal, which is to get favorable mention of his client’s names into the gossip columns and block the unfavorable mentions. It’s just the midcentury NYC entertainment business as usual, with practical demonstrations of the “cutthroat” aspects.
Sweet Smell of Success is itself bona fide entertainment, leavened by the sour noir notes. It ends up being a weird mix. No one is entirely believable and thus the whole thing is a little rickety, but it has an impossibly seductive pace that grabs and never lets go. It is situated, in 1957, at a peculiar place historically, well into postwar, nearly the end of the classic noir period, and already with intimations of the future TV industry ahead. Milner is perfectly competent as a boy scout type (playing guitar in a jazz group!) who must face down Hunsecker’s rank corruption, but he is inevitably too suggestive for me of Officer Pete Malloy (we miss Kent McCord a little). Larry Tate from Bewitched (David White) also shows up in a small role bringing his own distracting TV associations.
For all that, the strangely mundane yet titanic conflict between Sidney Falco and J.J. Hunsecker makes Sweet Smell of Success work well, especially in the carefully constructed New York after hours milieu. I love the score, I love the photography, the vivid look and feel of the big city, and I love Tony Curtis’s performance, which is the core of a bunch of solid performances here. Burt Lancaster is epic as a very bad man who is a newspaper columnist, and smaller roles by Jeff Donnell, Barbara Nichols, Emile Meyer, and others are very good too. It’s a somewhat flimsy story but Sweet Smell of Success comes with lots of surprises and fine points.
Lancaster is impressive in this one, as he usually is, but his screen time is limited compared to Curtis. We don’t even hear from or see Hunsecker until 20 minutes in to a picture that’s not that long. Instead, the movie stays with Falco practically every step of the way and Curtis is absolutely up to the job: burbling up a steady stream of wheedling, fawning, pitching, mocking, pushing palaver, even as his eyes dart around the scenes sizing things up. He is constantly in motion. He never wavers from his goal, which is to get favorable mention of his client’s names into the gossip columns and block the unfavorable mentions. It’s just the midcentury NYC entertainment business as usual, with practical demonstrations of the “cutthroat” aspects.
Sweet Smell of Success is itself bona fide entertainment, leavened by the sour noir notes. It ends up being a weird mix. No one is entirely believable and thus the whole thing is a little rickety, but it has an impossibly seductive pace that grabs and never lets go. It is situated, in 1957, at a peculiar place historically, well into postwar, nearly the end of the classic noir period, and already with intimations of the future TV industry ahead. Milner is perfectly competent as a boy scout type (playing guitar in a jazz group!) who must face down Hunsecker’s rank corruption, but he is inevitably too suggestive for me of Officer Pete Malloy (we miss Kent McCord a little). Larry Tate from Bewitched (David White) also shows up in a small role bringing his own distracting TV associations.
For all that, the strangely mundane yet titanic conflict between Sidney Falco and J.J. Hunsecker makes Sweet Smell of Success work well, especially in the carefully constructed New York after hours milieu. I love the score, I love the photography, the vivid look and feel of the big city, and I love Tony Curtis’s performance, which is the core of a bunch of solid performances here. Burt Lancaster is epic as a very bad man who is a newspaper columnist, and smaller roles by Jeff Donnell, Barbara Nichols, Emile Meyer, and others are very good too. It’s a somewhat flimsy story but Sweet Smell of Success comes with lots of surprises and fine points.
In total, still classic:
ReplyDelete"Son, I don't relish shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun, so why don't you just shuffle along?"