Posted on 04/05/2025 3:34:45 PM PDT by Twotone
Last week's column talked about a movie with an unlikeable main character. This week I'm afraid it's more of the same, only this time our main feature is a film with not one but two unsavory protagonists, one of them a moral delinquent, the other a monster of immense self regard and power. The only relief is that Sweet Smell of Success is in glorious black and white, and set in wonderful, terrible mid-century Manhattan.
Alexander Mackendrick's film was a flop when it came out in 1957 but you wouldn't know it today; Sweet Smell of Success has made top movie lists in Sight and Sound, Time, Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times and the American Film Institute. It was chosen to be preserved by the Library of Congress and was given a deluxe reissue by Criterion. It has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
That might make it look like the kind of classic film that you're supposed to take in like harsh medicine but it isn't. I don't know what audiences saw or didn't see when the picture came out but Mackendrick's film is a riveting portrait of awful people hustling each other to their just reward, beautifully shot and written with strong coffee for ink. You could say that they don't make them like this anymore, but I'm not sure they really made them like this back then.
The picture starts with what's probably one of the greatest New York City title sequences ever, and a showcase of the work of cameraman James Wong Howe, composer Elmer Bernstein and editor Alan Crosland Jr. It's Times Square before the Naked Cowboy and the grifters in Shrek suits, lit by neon and movie marquees that suffuse the sky with a twilight glow even well after dusk.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
“Requiem for a louse”
I briefly thought that was a movie about Justin(e) True-dolt’s political career.
Hate to rain on anyone’s parade, but the central character of sleazy newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker, portrayed by Burt Lancaster, was based on Walter Winchell. I am certain this negative portrayal had nothing to do with the fact Winchell became more and more a Conservattive in his later years.
I didn’t like Burt Lancaster in the title role. He doesn’t appear right for it. He’s more of a muscular, strong guy rather than an erudite and petulant art critic, more of a guy with a machine gun in his hand than a pen for writing poisoning reviews. George Sanders would have been a better choice. He has sophistication and an upper class college style dripping from his words. Sanders also played bad characters — almost typecast for that part. Back then, if you were sophisticated, educated and had a bit of Brit accent you were a bad dude to the American public. The common man was in, and even wealthy tycoons would brag of their simple forefathers and coming from common stock. So Burt was more the lady’d man hunk than a nervous, fastidious man squirreled up in some artistic garret or family penthouse. Tony Curtis was also a bad choice because he played poorly off of Burt’s role. Both were poor choices.
I remember thinking it was rather anti-climactic. Another introspective movie that sought to expose some social ill. But like so many other such movies, it seemed to address a question nobody asked.
“...seemed to address a question nobody asked.”
Often happens when the plot is a mere contrivance concocted to malign by proxy someone undeserving of scorn.
It can be funny, when it’s on-target, otherwise... not so much.
There is about a ten-year gap between the accurate portrayals of Manhattan in The Naked City and Sweet Smell of Success, and it is interesting to see how the changes both in urban culture and in technology (TV, AC, etc.) alter the experience.
I always found Tony Curtis a bit creepy.
Just finished watching this movie, it was pretty enjoyable.
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