The Sweet Smell Of Success Details

Sweet Smell of Cynicism

Alexander Mackendrick may be best known in this country for Ealing Comedies, but this, his first foray into Hollywood, is surely his Greatest Achievement. The sly wit shown in The Ladykillers is let off the leash and the result is an astonishing (typically English?)broadside on ambition-at-all-cost American Culture. Tony Curtis is perfect as a sleazeball press agent, but top marks surely to Burt Lancaster, chilling and hateful as the (incestous?) newspaper columnist JJ Hunsecker. A lot of the film is shot on location and only Woody Allen's Manhatten has made New York look so damn alluring (albeit in a very different way.) Fantastic Bernstein score to boot. Absolute Bloody Classic.

Quite simply the finest film noir ever made. Tony Curtis is the lowlife agent who has to grovel to Burt Lancaster's gossip columnist. Both actors give sterling perfomances, especially Lancaster as the seemingly inhuman JJ. The cinematography and the score are both absolutely searing, with late night New York being transformed into a seething mass of jazz bars, philandering politians and tough men wearing great hats. The real start of this movie, though, is the dialogue - concise, tough as hell and untouchably cool. That the plot is as merciless as the protagonists and dialogue really means this is a noir movie which is unlikely to ever be bettered.