A Embriaguez do Sucesso

Another poster "stole" the one line summary I wanted to use: "Match me, Sidney." Damn. It's one of the best lines in the movie. Oh, well.

"Sweet Smell of Success" is a great, wildly entertaining movie. It reminds me of "Dangerous Liasons" in both it's subject ("bad" people making life worse for more decent folk) and how swiftly and imaginatively directed it is. It's juicy from beginning to end. Burt Lancaster is once again terrific as J.J. Hunsecker, Walter Winchell-esque writer of a "society" column which is more of a tool of destruction for those who cross his path.

But it's Tony Curtis who holds the movie together. Always scheming and plotting and never letting a decent human emotion take precedence over his drive to succeed at any cost. He's Marvelous and was never again to achieve what he did here.

But there's a third star to this production and it's New York City itself. The on location photography is stunning. What is amazing is that at the time the movie was made (1957) on location filming was just becoming "in vogue". For a film like this, it HAD to filmed on location or else it's power would be substantially diluted. I work in Manhattan near where a lot of this film was made (J.J. lives in the Brill Building which is on Broadway between 49th and 50th Streets, right around the corner from me). To see what the neighborhood looked like over 40 years ago is amazing. Surprisingly, it's the astonishing on site photography that prevents the film from really feeling dated. Also, the themes in the film are timeless as well.

"Sweet Smell of Success" is a classic from top to bottom.

Tony Curtis learns the hard way about the "Sweet Smell of Success" in this 1957 film that stars Burt Lancaster, Sam Levene, Susan Harrison, and Barbara Nichols. In the pre-Internet days when the newspaper was king, the columnists ruled - Winchell, Ed Sullivan, Cholly Knickerbocker, Radie Harris, and let's not forget Hedda and Louella! But the King was Winchell, and while I don't think the Burt Lancaster character of J.J. Hunsecker is modeled on him, the power and control the man wielded certainly is.

Tony Curtis plays one of his best roles as Sidney Falco, a low-ranking press agent who is dependent on people like Hunsecker to mention his clients in their daily columns. But Sidney is on the outs with Hunsecker, a very bad place to be. Hunsecker has ordered Sidney to break up his sister Susan's relationship with a jazz musician, Steve (Martin Milner), and Susan is still seeing him. Sidney comes up with a plan to tear the two apart which probably would have worked, but when Steve stands up to J.J., Hunsecker is out for blood. He demands the plan be taken one step further and dangles an attractive carrot in front of Sidney to make it happen.

Done in black and white with most of the action taking place at night and often on the streets of Times Square, "The Sweet Smell of Success" has an atmosphere of slime and grit. The handsome Lancaster and Curtis are not particularly well photographed - it's not meant to be a glamorous picture. The dialogue is fast, to the point, and witty and the performances are breathtaking. Lancaster underplays the twisted Hunsecker so that his contempt for the people he writes about - and his sick attraction to his sister - can be clearly shown. He could have played it more along the lines of Curtis' Sidney - an obvious, manipulative rat - but it wouldn't have been as right as Lancaster's tightly-controlled J.J.

Curtis was born to play Sidney - an attractive, fast-talking man with no morals who plays both ends against the middle. He's a New York character, ideal for a New York guy like Curtis who grew up on the streets. Sidney is totally outrageous - he invites a cigarette girl to his apartment and then pimps her out to a columnist so he can get an item in his column; he tries blackmailing another columnist, but that backfires. It doesn't stop him from trying again.

The two victims of these piranhas are Susan and Steve, a young couple deeply in love who want to be married. Their simple story is told against a backdrop of scandal, revenge, manipulation and blackmail. Their situation makes the actions of J.J. and Sidney even seedier and more cruel than they already are.

"Sweet Smell of Success" has become a cult classic and was actually mounted at one point as a Broadway musical. Like "Nightmare Alley," it probably was too grim for audiences back then. Is anything too grim for audiences of today? Doubtful.

BURT LANCASTER was at the height of his illustrious film career when he played J.J. Hunsecker, the Broadway gossip columnist who dipped his pen in poison to destroy careers. TONY CURTIS was a long way from the days when he was ridiculed for saying "Yonda is the castle of my fadder" in films like SON OF ALI BABA and THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH.

Here, Curtis is every bit up to the chore of playing the slavishly obedient but hateful publicity man who seems to be fawning over Lancaster, but really despises him. Two towering performances in a film with some of the sharpest exchanges of dialog ever heard.

The cruel side of show biz gets full and rich observation from screenwriter Clifford Odets from a novel by Ernest Lehman. The bright lights of Broadway play against the rainswept streets of Broadway and Times Square, a shadowy sort of film noir background for the brutal story being told.

The story abounds in quotable moments, such as when Lancaster tells Curtis, "You're a cookie full of arsenic." The jazz score background sets the appropriate mood for a story as cynical as this, and the twists and turns of the plot will keep you hooked until the uncertain ending. The main plot line has Lancaster opposed to his sister's suitor, a jazz musician (MARTIN MILNER) and his efforts to get this man out of his sister's life with the help of his obedient slave.

But mainly, this is a film worth savoring to watch the intense performances of Lancaster and Curtis. I doubt whether either of them has ever done better work. For Lancaster, it only cemented his reputation as a man already judged to be a fine actor in the right role. For Curtis, it made film critics take this "pretty boy from Brooklyn" seriously for the first time and was the first big milestone in his budding film career.

The main characters in "Sweet Smell Of Success" are two of the most unpleasant, unprincipled and unsympathetic people imaginable. Both are utterly corrupt and would do whatever it takes to achieve their own perverse ends.

J J Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) is a gossip columnist who wields enormous power in New York and has the ability to make or break the careers of anyone who features in his articles. He plies his vicious trade without any concern for those whose lives he damages and frequently influences people to do his bidding by threatening to expose some unflattering or scandalous information about them. Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is a press agent who makes his living by providing material for Hunsecker's column. When Hunsecker becomes unhappy about a relationship that has developed between his sister and a jazz guitarist, he orders Falco to do whatever's necessary to break them up. Hunsecker racks up the pressure on Falco by not accepting any of his contributions for the column until he succeeds in his mission.

Hunsecker's power and threatening manner preclude him from having any genuine or meaningful relationships with other people. He is unconcerned about this but has an unnaturally close relationship with his sister, who on various occasions, he describes as being all that he's got.

In his efforts to get a smear about the guitarist published, Falco threatens to blackmail one columnist by telling his wife about one of his indiscretions with a cigarette girl and also provides another columnist with an inducement to print the story by getting his girlfriend to prostitute herself. He later plants marijuana in the guitarist's pocket and tips off a corrupt police officer who has the guitarist arrested.

Hunsecker thrives on the amount of power and control that he is able to use and it's ironic that he has such a hard time using his power successfully in the area of his life which is most personal and important to him.

"Sweet Smell Of Success" is expertly directed by Alexander Mackendrick and the story and it's characters are considerably more original in nature than those found in the vast majority of movies. The dialogue is impressively incisive throughout and some of the remarks made by Hunsecker are delivered with great panache. When he says "I love this dirty town", the comment exemplifies what he's all about and also highlights the source of his power. His remarks that Falco is a "cookie full of arsenic" and "lives in moral twilight" are typical quick-fire put-downs. These and his "40 faces speech" could seem pretentious and contrived if uttered by some characters but sound perfectly credible when said by Hunsecker, who is clearly very literate and well practised in coining such bitter and brutal insults. Lancaster and Curtis both contribute exceptional performances which must rank among the greatest achieved in their illustrious careers.

From the opening credits to the climatic ending, the scintillating dialogue and the magnetic performances from both Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis this is Hollywood at its cerebral best. The king of the thinking mans cinema. Has better dialogue ever been written, the meetings between all the different characters that inhabit this world of shadows and intrigue, constantly draw the viewers attention to this masterpiece. When the so called film buffs compile there lists of the "best" films and so on, this should always be talked of in the top five and yet though recognised more as the years go by this is still a highly overlooked film. That Marlon Brando, De niro, Nicholson and the like should be recognised so often in said lists when Burt Lancaster in this film and in so many others has equalled or surpassed there best performances is a real scandal. Perhaps because this film strikes at the very heart of the establishment and shows the media and press up for the unscrupulous scum they are that this is one those fellows would like to forget. It is always difficult to look the truth of oneself in the mirror and this is one mirror the media should look very closely at. A masterpiece from Lancaster, who's courage never failed when making films and was always ready to tackle the kind of film making that lesser men would not have dared to, not to mention casting himself in a "bad guy" role that defied his heroic, handsome leading man status. Let us not forget that this is the same man who through out his life was never afraid to speak out on subjects that were important to him, a life long liberal and contemptuous of anyone who excepted limitation. I love this film and both Lancaster and the picture were far ahead of their time.