First Picture Show: Sweet Smell Of Success

jason stives looks at a forgotten black & white with Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster …

Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)
Directed by: Alexander Mackendrick
Written by: Ernest Lehman, Clifford Odets
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis

Plot: All press agent Sydney Falco (Tony Curtis) wants is a chance to be a successful columnist, but the biggest mouth in the business, columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), stands in his way. But J.J. has problems of his own as he greatly despises a man named Dallas (Martin Milner), the fiancé of his younger sister, Susan (Susan Harrison). When Falco presents the opportunity to brandish Dallas a crook in a competing column, Hunsecker greatly obliges by offering Sydney the chance to run his column for awhile. But deceit, corruption, and despicable nature lie at the heart of both men’s journeys to satisfaction.

What’s Been Said: “The main incentive to see this movie is its witty, pungent and idiomatic dialogue, such as you never hear on the screen anymore in this age of special-effects illiteracy”. — Andrew Sarris, The New York Observer

Upon First Viewing: This was a word-of-mouth film for me. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis were two actors I was greatly familiar with from various works (Lancaster in Sorry, Wrong Number, Curtis in Some Like It Hot), but their prevalence in pop-culture idiom never hit me in the way a Charles Bronson or a Jack Lemmon would. Two icons of film, yet to me they were just an aspect of the time period they were made famous. Still, after a recent re-release on DVD of this film found its way into stores, I had heard nothing but great things, but never the reasons why. Needless to say as a writer, my love for strong and witty dialogue has always stood tall amongst every aspect a movie can offer.

Yet Sweet Smell Of Success is more than just a dialogue ridden film as some critics now a day feel, it’s a statement on real people in the most famous city in the world. Greatly steeped in cross genres of noir and melodrama, the black and white world of 1950s New York City is grotesquely picturesque when you consider the film is meant to paint the world of two slimy publicists as dark, degrading, and unbearable. It’s a testament to the art form of film, where worlds are built only to be torn down upon completion.

Many times since seeing this film, I question how I ever overlooked Burt Lancaster as an actor. While always familiar or at least aware of his performance in 1953’s From Here To Eternity, I was never one to give Mr. Lancaster his due, basically viewing him as a chiseled mug of a man in the same vein of his good friend and frequent tough guy co-star Kirk Douglas. But after viewing him initially in the noir classic Sorry, Wrong Number, Lancaster’s tendency to be brash, irascible but morbidly likeable caught me as rather unique considering his range of roles. It instantly recalled me to my feelings towards Daniel Day Lewis’ performance as Bill the Butcher in Gangs Of New York in you love to hate the character in front of you.

In this film, also playing a man that has a reputation amongst the city he lives in, Lancaster oozes a domineering mentality that reinforces extreme masculinity and almost incestuous like follies. As Hunsecker, he is smug, almost sarcastically over the top and incredibly frightening. A man with a hidden agenda, and the ability to do greater harm, more so than the pen to paper writing his character is praised for in the movie. Hunsecker is a megalomaniac by all accounts, a man who thrives on the slightest hint of fear and he craves to be the person to say what he wants and not care. He greatly despises his sister Susan’s fiancé, a blond haired doll of man named Dallas. Regardless of how well he treats his sister, Dallas is invading on Hunsecker’s territory, his dominance being reduced by his mere presence. He deems Dallas a red, a communist and drug fiend, which is such a statement between maturity and youth, especially in the time of the Red Scare. Hunsecker is a model citizen with more than control at stake as he sees a personal reputation in disarray at the idea of losing control over his sister, and it’s almost more important than the reputation he has as a columnist.

In comparison to the hard exterior of Lancaster, Curtis’ Sydney Falco is just a fink and a desperate and despicable man. At the time, Tony Curtis was not much of a starlet in the eyes of Hollywood other than his flashy over-the-top personas he became known for in screwball, pillow talk comedies. When this film was released in the summer of 1957, many of Curtis’ loyal (and female) fan bases were accosted by the scumbag of a character he portrayed on screen. But it’s this film that made Curtis more legendary than that of a bankable box office draw regardless of any success that followed. The disheartening pretty boy looks fade into obscurity as Falco loses his soul for the chance to hit it big. His love life in disarray and his pension to run others over for a slice of the pie is so cringe worthy that it’s almost impossible to believe that he is persuasive. In one stomach-turning scene, he offers up the services of his favorite gal pal to a potential client in his quest for a column. The fact that he actually convinced her to go along with the transaction is almost frightening as his good looks and charm only shadows the rat he truly is underneath a three piece suit.

One of the most appealing aspects of this film is the relationship the main characters have to the city. “I love this dirty town,” Hunsecker coos into the night after his initial meeting with Falco. In that, sets the dirty and scummy tone to the film, with characters who use the deceitful environment of New York to hide how truly despicable they are. They know their way around, a signifier of their manipulative ways, something they have worked before on grander scales, and New York City is all a stage. They walk with wisps of wind through the streets of Time Square, against busy workers and heavy traffic, as if they know it too well. But amongst a picturesque backdrop it comes back to the characters at hand.

Hensecker and Falco are of a very rare breed of onscreen villainy in that neither is absolutely deplorable for being malicious or corrupt but for desperation of control and power. As Susan says to her brother at the film’s end, she doesn’t hate him but pities him. The power of a controlling man only goes so far amongst the various circles to which he entertains and rules, and family is the ultimate weak point for J.J., and its self destruction running course. It’s almost more satisfying to see Hensecker lose what he loves to control most, then to watch Sydney roll in the muck of the city he has tried so greatly to impress. There are no winners and losers in this story, something that probably didn’t sit well with audiences at the time. In 1957, heroes were more profitable and desired then “real” people on the screen, and big flashy pictures were the box office draws of that year like Bridge On The River Kwai and Peyton Place. Regardless, the film garnered much critical praise and today is considered one of the greatest films of all time. Criterion recently reissued Sweet Smell Of Success in a new glossy package with tons of extras to help tell the remarkable story behind this film and to celebrate a one of kind classic.