Sweet Smell of Success
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Movie Reviews of Sweet Smell of Success
Movie Review: A turning point film!
Summary: 5 Stars
This monumental cult movie established a before and after in the genre of the Film Noir. The project is ambitious, the characters are so well depicted, the dramatic nucleus has maintained through all those years. Burt Lancaster made one of his five best achievements in his career: the other three to my mind would be: Elmer Gantry, Birdman of Alcatraz,The swimmer and Atlantic City.
In the other hand this colossal picture stopped the extended belief of the great audiences to consider a simple handsome face actor to Tony Curtis, who previously in The Defiant ones had proved his artistic skills.
Another interesting aspect of this pyramidal artwork resides in the fact to portrait the bleak side New York City with such intensity level that we had not seen it from the times of On the Waterfront. Two remarkable films would focus similar premises; Orson Welles' Mr Arkadin: Confidential Report and Martin Ritt's Edge of the city.
If you think it over you may link this evil character of Lancaster with Michael Douglas in Wall Street. This man embodied the greed, the febrile fight for reach the highest power spheres, without any ethic consideration and a single scruple particle.
This wholeness, and the multiple obtained readings from the deep insights of the human soul faced to the ominous presence of the Big Apple conform a true document, a must have for any serious hard collector of great movies of any age.
"The cat is in the bag; and the bag is in the river".
The masterpiece of Alexander MacEndrick!
Movie Review: Great Acting, Great Script, Great...Everything
Summary: 5 Stars
"Sweet Smell of Success" is a film from 1957, commonly called one of the greatest films ever made. It's pushing 50 years old, but even now doesn't feel dated for one second and features two great actors in their most memorable roles. These actors are Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster starring as Sidney Falco and J.J. Hunsecker. Hunsecker is one of the most powerful newspaper columnists in New York, who is capable of ruining people with his column. Falco is a press agent, who works with Hunsecker by digging dirt up on people. Early on in the movie we learn that Hunsecker has shut Falco out, mostly due to the fact that Hunsecker hired Falco to break up a romance between Hunsecker's sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and a jazz guitarist named Steve (Martin Milner). Falco has failed to do so. The rest of the film is, for the most part, built on the foundation of this; With Falco and Hunsecker trying to create a smear ad to get Susan away from Steve. The acting is extraordinary. This is probably Tony Curtis' best performance aside from "The Boston Strangler." I'd never seen Lancaster in a movie, so imagine my surprise about how good an actor the man was. This is a very memorable movie; Most movies I see nowadays, I've forgotten the characters name within minutes. It's doubtful you'll forget the name Sidney Falco quickly, it's one of those names that just sticks with you. This is a legendary movie, Roger Ebert called it "One extraordinary American noir."
That's accurate enough, it's superb.
GRADE: A-
Movie Review: Brilliant congruence of great talents
Summary: 5 Stars
Criterion's edition of this film - one of the best about celebrity, family, newspapers, New York, show business - is one of the better efforts of that illustrious company. Like the film, it is all of a piece, from its lurid pulp fiction packaging, to its excellent extras including films on the director, the cameraman and a former student of the director's. The talk by historian Neal Gabler also places the Sweet Smell of Success in the historical context of the life of Walter Winchell.
Dramatically, watching columnist extraordinaire JJ Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) chew up and spit out the reputations of those he doesn't favour, provides a great portrait of the use and misuse of power. It is also Mr Curtis' greatest role - a role, I believe, not wholly unrelated to the likes of Willy Loman, Harry Bogen or the real estate agents portrayed in David Mamet's GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS - in short, the American iconic salesman/peddler/pushy character with no education, ambition galore and lots of street cred. Mr Curtis was born to play Sidney Falco who'd sell his mother to get his own column. Add to this coruscating dialogue, Mr James Wong Howe behind the camera, and the objective outsider's view of the American urban landscape, and you have one masterpiece of American cinema. The Chico Hamilton Quintet are an added bonus.
Not least of the many pleasures of this work, is the back and white photography. A film to revisit from time to time.
Movie Review: A Brilliant Noir Tale set on New York's Streets
Summary: 5 Stars
"Sweet Smell of Success" is one of the most brilliant film noir epics ever made. Burt Lancaster not only starred in this masterpiece, but co-produced through the auspices of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster. The dialogue crackles. It is no small wonder since Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Clifford Odets shares screenwriting credit with Oscar recipient Ernest Lehman. Never has the internal warfare permeating New York's competitive streets been presented with more brutal reality, or with a greater sense of rapaciousness.Lancaster is letter perfect as an unprincipled, authoritarian, syndicated newspaper columnist who holds his younger sister, played by newcomer Susan Harrison, in constant bondage. Tony Curtis is a low life publicist who, working for Lancaster, is caught in a Catch-22. When he behaves in the same sociopathic manner as Lancaster, a trait the columnist demands, he is repulsed by Curtis'absence of scruples. Lancaster's disdain for Curtis no debt stems from the mirrored reflection he sees of himself.
As someone who has written extensively about film noir and is fascinated by the genre, this is one film I glowingly endorse without qualification. The writing, the acting, and the deft direction of Alexander MacKendrick coalesce to make this a venerable cinema classic.
William Hare
Movie Review: A finely crafted gem
Summary: 5 Stars
Unmissable! Like other great human artifacts, this film redeems: it is one more reason to celebrate having lived and witnessed. Script, direction, score, cinematography, and acting all come together at the highest level, fashioning a thing of cold beauty and savage vitality.
"Sweet Smell of Success" offers many pleasures, the best of which are the least obvious. Among these is the troubling enigma of J.J.'s root motivation, which early critics cited as a flaw, and later ones attributed to incestuous impulses. I think the fact that one is never quite certain is characteristic of the film's entire universe; it swallows and digests its viewers more than the other way around. Or so runs the most profitable way to approach the movie, which is short on tidy explanations and teeming with specificities and immersive sub-worlds.
And there is tautness, as well: suspenseful developments; dark, fascinating characters victimizing the virtuous and themselves; a system of elusive rules, dependencies, and social dynamics that play themselves out with a ruthless and compelling logic.
In short, a work of great intelligence and talent; no cynic can justly deny its human value.