Cheap Sweet Smell of Success (DVD) (Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis) (Alexander Mackendrick) Price

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Customer Reviews of Sweet Smell of Success

"MATCH me, Sidney!" "Not just now, JJ."
This late 50's show-biz noir makes recent, silmilar forays ("Swimming With Sharks", "The Player","The Last Big Thing","Celebrity", et al)look like goofy teen comedies. An unrelenting gaze at the paranoiac,glad-handing and back-stabbing cult of celebrity. Burt Lancaster (who also co-produced) turns in one of his most chilling performances as the NYC gossip columnist who can make 'em and break 'em, and Tony Curtis' portrayal of a sycophantic weasel press agent is so oily you can almost taste the Vitalis in his hair.The film has a host of memorable supporting players--corrupt cops, cigarette girls,struggling nightclub performers, sleazy politicans,barflys and other typical inhabitants of the "noir" canon.There are so many quotable lines that you might as well put quotation marks at the beginning and the end of the script! (In fact,if you happen to catch the 1982 film "Diner", look fast for the cameo by the character who is so obsessed with "Sweet Smell.." that he has it memorized, and walks in and out of scenes spouting lines from it!) This is the sort of cynical, unapologetic portrayal of American culture that usually comes from European directors; it's amazing that this was a U.S. production, released when the McCarthy hearings were still recent history! Don't miss this one.

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A knockout script, stellar acting, and dazzling photography
This film, barely distributed upon release (it's a thinly veiled barb directed at the Walter Winchells of the world), features what is arguably the finest screenplay ever written. Ernest Lehman started the task, but Clifford Odetts (the later years, more bitter Odetts) was called in to "punch it up," as Tony Curtis later explained in a lecture at the Smithsonian a couple of years ago (the film was never shown publicly in Washington until the mid-1990's). (According to Curtis, such lines as "The cat's in the bag, the bag's in the river" were by Odetts, whom Curtis observed in a trailer on the set after midnight in Manhattan at a typewriter next to a whiskey bottle.) What other movie features lines like: "My left hand hasn't seen my right hand in 30 years"? This is clearly Tony Curtis' greatest role as a sleazy press agent, yet it is nearly topped by Burt Lancaster's chilling performance as a corrupt columnist. The dialog moves at breakneck speed chock full of such artifice that one is left nearly breathless trying to follow along. For jazz aficionados, check out the cameo appearance by Chico Hamilton's quintet with Paul Horn on flute and Fred Katz on cello, a rare film recording of their trademark "Tuesday at 2" late night jazz riffs. (The soundtrack equals the excellence of the rest of the film.) The photography by James Wong Howe is, as usual, impeccable, making ample use of wide angle lenses. For New Yorkers, this film captures the essence of Manhattan after dark. Although the setting is the world of the airwaves, the print media, and publicity hounds, the script is so true to life that I've found astonishing parallels to my workplace. Yet the words are so laden with methaphor as to defy the imagination. Sit back and let this picture take you away. It's a ride you won't soon forget.

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"AN APPLE MADE OF ARSENIC."
One of the problems with studying in film school, being a movie buff and getting older is that at some point in ones' life a man ventures into the video store, peruses the shelves and reaches the conclusion that he has seen every movie worth seeing.

I thought I was getting there until a few years ago when I heard about and checked out "The Sweet Smell of Success". It was like that with "Chinatown", which I never saw until the 1990s and now consider one of the best films ever.

"Sweet Smell of Success" holds up totally even though it is black-white, set in 1957. Burt Lancaster is J.J., based on Walter Winchell, who was a leading accuser of Communists in the media.

Tony Curtis is a lackey publicist who lives on the whim of those who pay him to place items in various columns, which means he must grovel at the feet of clients and columnists. J.J. plays him like a fiddle. This has lines so vitriolic and perfect, Frank Manciewics in "All About Eve" is no more biting, and Bette Davis in "Eve" bites with the best of 'em.

Lancaster just fills the screen with irony and sardonic, hurtful wit. Curtis fends it off with skill, it is like a fencing match. Anybody who has any desire to study dialogue must watch and memorize this. Everything is tremendous; the acting, the directing, the score, the noir shadows of New York at night. The music is unreal, lots of horns, filling the room with its wailing sobs of a corrupt, naked city.

A love story between J.J.'s little sis and a musician (Martin Milner I think, who was in "Adam 12"), is the heart of the story. It is the one true, good thing, but J.J. is a monster. Perhaps Bob Towne had this in mind when he cast John Huston to be an incestuos father in "Chinatown". The inference, being the '50s, is much more subtle but it seems J.J. has the hots for sis and wants nobody to have her. He brands the musician a Commie, using sycophant secondary journalists to keep his own hands clean.

Any chance for this dark one to have a happy ending goes down the tubes when sis, as much to torment her bro, kills herself. Curtis is utterly ammoral. His picture appears in Webster's next to the word ammoral.

Many films have played off this theme. "Swimming With Sharks" (1996, Kevin Spacey, Frank Whaley) comes to mind. If this could be 20 stars I'd give it 20.

Steven Travers
Author of "Barry Bonds: Baseball's Superman"
straversca@aol.com