Sweet Smell of Success | | Cast : | Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis | | Director : | Alexander Mackendrick | | Studio : | MGM/UA Video | | Format : | Black & White, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | June 27, 1957 | | DVD Released Date : | June 19, 2001 | | Language : | Spanish (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | NR (Not Rated) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 11, 2005 | | Summary | A finely crafted gem | Content
 | Unmissable! Like other great human artifacts, this film redeems: it is one more reason to celebrate having lived and witnessed. Script, direction, score, cinematography, and acting all come together at the highest level, fashioning a thing of cold beauty and savage vitality.
"Sweet Smell of Success" offers many pleasures, the best of which are the least obvious. Among these is the troubling enigma of J.J.'s root motivation, which early critics cited as a flaw, and later ones attributed to incestuous impulses. I think the fact that one is never quite certain is characteristic of the film's entire universe; it swallows and digests its viewers more than the other way around. Or so runs the most profitable way to approach the movie, which is short on tidy explanations and teeming with specificities and immersive sub-worlds.
And there is tautness, as well: suspenseful developments; dark, fascinating characters victimizing the virtuous and themselves; a system of elusive rules, dependencies, and social dynamics that play themselves out with a ruthless and compelling logic.
In short, a work of great intelligence and talent; no cynic can justly deny its human value.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 23, 2005 | | Summary | A Rotten Slice of the Big Apple | Content
| This monochrome 1957 film opens with shots of midtown NYC where the 'Globe' newspaper is being distributed. J.J. Hunsecker's column is featured. Sidney Falco, a press agent, has failed to get an item into Hunsecker's column. (In case you wondered how this worked; its advertising, like payola.) Sidney has failed to break up JJ's niece's romance. The scenes show Sidney's life and his attempts to manipulate people. A press agent gives items to a columnist to print and entertain his readers; it is trivial news, but can be used to sway public opinion. We see the seamy nightlife of Broadway, where Sidney pimps his girlfriend to a columnist for a break. It shows how Sidney uses a news item to promote himself with a comedian. It shows how an anonymous smear can damage an innocent person. Do these tricks still go on? The hypocrisy and phoniness of this film is revolting, but I guess that's sort of how "show business" is.
JJ Hunsecker hatches a plot to take care of his sister's boyfriend (he stood up to JJ). Sidney will be the go-between, and be rewarded with a job as JJ's temporary replacement. All he has to do is slip a cigarette package into the coat of JJ's sister's boyfriend, and then tip off the police detective who owes JJ a favor. This leads to a suicide attempt (or an act), and a final showdown in JJ's apartment. Sidney is arrested by JJ's detective, and Susan leaves JJ. [If this film were made today they would show Susan as JJ's mistress who left him for a younger and more virile man (implied by JJ's bitchiness).]
I suppose this expose of lying gossip columnists was worthwhile in its day. Nowadays they have talk radio shows to spew out stories. But many people still believe in what they read or hear, and can't be bothered to think for themselves.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 15, 2005 | | Summary | A turning point film! | Content
| This monumental cult movie established a before and after in the genre of the Film Noir. The project is ambitious, the characters are so well depicted, the dramatic nucleus has maintained through all those years. Burt Lancaster made one of his five best achievements in his career: the other three to my mind would be: Elmer Gantry, Birdman of Alcatraz,The swimmer and Atlantic City.
In the other hand this colossal picture stopped the extended belief of the great audiences to consider a simple handsome face actor to Tony Curtis, who previously in The Defiant ones had proved his artistic skills.
Another interesting aspect of this pyramidal artwork resides in the fact to portrait the bleak side New York City with such intensity level that we had not seen it from the times of On the Waterfront. Two remarkable films would focus similar premises; Orson Welles' Mr Arkadin: Confidential Report and Martin Ritt's Edge of the city.
If you think it over you may link this evil character of Lancaster with Michael Douglas in Wall Street. This man embodied the greed, the febrile fight for reach the highest power spheres, without any ethic consideration and a single scruple particle.
This wholeness, and the multiple obtained readings from the deep insights of the human soul faced to the ominous presence of the Big Apple conform a true document, a must have for any serious hard collector of great movies of any age.
The masterpiece of Alexander MacEndrick!
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| Rating | | | Date | July 10, 2005 | | Summary | Peel her like a tangerine? | Content
| Here are a few memorable lines from this movie:
Sidney: The brains may be Jersey City, but the clothes are Trainor-Norell.
Sidney: A press agent eats a columnist's dirt and is expected to call it manna.
Sidney: Tonight, before you go to bed. The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river.
Bartha: Tell him that like yourself, he's got the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.
Rita: What am I? A bowl of fruit? A tangerine that peels in a minute?
Hunsecker: I'd hate to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic.
Hunsecker: I often wish you were dead and wore a hearing aid. With a simple flick of the switch, I could shut out the greedy murmur of little men.
Hunsecker: Sidney, conjugate me a verb. For instance, to promise. You promised to break up that romance - when?
Oh, Mercy! Who wrote this tripe? I know the movie is supposedly "film noir" and therefore its dialog is excused as artsy rather than realistic. But can anyone really endure these pretentious lines with a straight face? Tried as I might to respect this movie's highfalutin aspiration, as I watched the movie I kept laughing until tears rolled down my cheeks - and this was a movie in which its main character, Susie, was so tortured that she tried committing suicide. Ironically, she was the only character who talked like a normal person. May be it was the long-suffering dialogs that pushed her over the edge!
American film noir is a respectable art style, but this movie made a caricature of this genre. "Shut out the greedy murmur of little men"? The screenwriter was trying too hard, and ended up passing lines from Dick Tracy comics as profound soliloquies.
The plot is intriguing, and the cinematography well crafted. This could have been a good movie were not for its hideous dialogs. But that's like saying that nuclear energy could have been a smashing success were not for Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
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| Rating | | | Date | May 03, 2005 | | Summary | Brutally Brillians | Content
| (...)
This is the kind of film that could coin an expression like "They don't make `em like that anymore," except that people have been using that line for every piece of crap that was made more than two years ago. Go ahead and say it to yourself, and I'll say that David Mamet's Glengarry, Glen Ross comes close. Both feature snarling, biting dialog. Both have irredeemable characters that will do anything for success. Mamet's characters are mostly down-and-outers who are scrapping at each other to find some sampling of their former successes. In Sweet Smell of Success there are successful characters and losers, both of which need each other to survive. It is a tale of a successful columnist and his need for a low life press agent. It is a bitter, bleak story of power, success and the desire to have more.
Burt Lancaster plays JJ Hunsecker, a powerful, successful columnist who is at the top of his game. He gets what he wants, when he wants it with no questions asked. He can make or break celebrities with a quick blurb in his column. He dines with politicians and gets any girl he wants. Tony Curtis is Sidney Falco, a low rent press agent who needs Lancaster's blurbs for his clients to keep in business. Problem is, Hunsecker has cut Falco out of his columns because Falco hasn't delivered on a deal they made. Though Hunsecker can garner the love and admiration of anyone he chooses, the one woman he cannot win over is his own sister. As he repeatedly says throughout the film, she's all he has. Problem is she is in love with a jazz singer, and they plan to marry. Hunsecker can't bear the thought of losing his sister, so he forces Falco to get rid of the boy by any means necessary.
The film is relentless. From beginning to end it never stops its pounding. There is never a breath of kindness. The two characters with some redeeming characteristics Hunsecker's sister, Susan (Susan Harrison) and her boyfriend, Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), are so overshadowed by the continual foul play by Hunsecker and Falco that they come away with a foul stench.
Tony Curtis pulls a performance that reminded me of his turn as the Boston Strangler. It is not difficult to see his Falco turning to murder if it helped him succeed. Though as the strangler, he seems to have found some remorse for his actions, where Falco is irredeemable to the very end.
There is a seen in the middle of the picture where Falco pulls a trick to convince a mid level performer to make Falco his press agent. At this point Falco needs all the clients he can get. Later the performer comes to Falco, ready to sign him as his agent. Falco, now feeling some signs of success brushes the performer off without a second thought. It is a telling scene of just how heartless and uncaring Falco has become.
Where has Burt Lancaster been all my life? Sadly enough, the only film I can remember watching him in is the 1986 toss-off comedy Tough Guys. His performance here is nothing short of astonishing. He is the king of his castle, never stepping off his high throne, treating everyone as servants. Even his shows of affection for Susan are grotesque and menacing.
This is a story that his hard to watch. It is brutal, and menacing with nary a redeeming aspect. But it is a film that must be watched. The craftsmanship of the filmmakers and the performances of the actors elevate it above so many others. It is nearly a morality tale of the horrors that befall humanities greed.
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