NFR Project: 'Sweet Smell of Success' (1957)

 

NFR Project: “Sweet Smell of Success”

Dir: Alexander Mackendrick

Scr: Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman

Pho: James Wong Howe

Ed: Alan Crosland Jr.

Premiere: July 4, 1957

96 min.

Another great New York film, Sweet Smell of Success is a brilliant yet untypical film from a gifted and perfectionist Scottish director, Alexander Mackendrick.

Mackendrick was at the time a veteran of the British film industry, having made the memorable comedies Whiskey Galore! (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951) , and The Ladykillers (1955) for Ealing. He came to America determined to make something utterly unlike his previous output. The result is a minor-key masterpiece.

He was lucky to acquire the services of the brilliant first-time screenwriter Ernest Lehman, who would later work on Sabrina, North by Northwest, The Sound of Music, West Sdie Story, The King and I, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Lehman became ill and had to bow out; he was replaced by the great Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter Clifford Odets. Odets, a prominent leftist, had been spared blacklisting by appearing as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

We are on Broadway between 42^nd and 57^th Streets. It’s a brutal story, tough and cynical. At its amoral center is Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), a slimy Broadway press agent hustling to get his clients’ names in the entertainment columns run by the daily New York newspaper. Publicity of such a kind could make or break a creative person’s career.

The king of the Broadway columnists is J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), a high-powered, high-handed ruler of the scene and all the players in it. He is modeled on several newspaper pundits, particularly Walter Winchell. His omniscience does not extend to his too-beloved sister Susan, with whom he has an unhealthy obsession. He wants to break her up with her boyfriend, Steve (Martin Milner), a jazz musician.

Sidney makes it his plan to break up Susan and Steve. A low-down liar, cheater, pimp, and traitor who will do anything to get ahead, Sidney is the antihero of the film, a small-timer looking for the big time. Tony Curtis wanted this part to prove that he could act; he does.

Matching him in vehemence is Lancaster, who plays Hunsecker with a cold, haughty stiffness that barely covers the wound-up tension inside his character. Hunsecker is controlling, vindictive, sadistic; it is one of Lancaster’s most frightening portrayals.

The two wreak havoc on those around them Hunsecker is determined to “tear (Steve) apart.” He gets Sidney to plant marijuana on him and call the (crooked) cops (good old Emile Meyer!). All this drives Susan to the brink of suicide. It is only the final round of betrayals that exposes them for the monsters that they are.

Justice of a kind is meted out, but the take on show business, journalism, and power politics in Manhattan is decidedly downbeat. Everyone is out for themselves, save for our young lovers. Shot in gritty black and white by the great James Wong Howe, the movie intimates that those highest in the pecking order are no worse than the lowest – and perhaps even more so.

Mackendrick soon tired of the deal-making aspects of Hollywood, and wound down his directing career. He went on to be a well-regarded educator at CalArts.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Tall T.

NFR Project: 'Paths of Glory' (1957)

  

NFR Project: “Paths of Glory”

Dir: Stanley Kubrick

Scr: Stanley Kubrick, Calder Willingham, Jim Thompson

Pho: Georg Krause

Ed: Eva Kroll

Premiere: Dec. 20, 1957

88 min.

Director Stanley Kubrick made only 13 feature films, of which this is the fourth. Nearly every one of them is a masterpiece. Though his film previous to this, The Killing (1956), is considered his first mature movie, Paths of Glory is a remarkable step forward.

This anti-war film concerns World War I. The story is based on the true-life incident of the Souain corporals affair of 1915, in which four men were executed for cowardice when a company of men in the French army failed to leave the trenches and attack a German position. Four corporals were chosen randomly from the company for death, with the intent of motivating other soldiers to obey orders. The extralegal incident sparked a huge popular backlash.

Here, the powers that be insist on an impossible attack on the “Anthill,” a major German position. Major General Broulard (Adolph Menjo) instructs his subordinate, Brigadier General Mireau (George Macready) to implement the order. Mireau in turn commands the protagonist, Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), to carry out the orders. Dax is a tough but fair officer who doubts that his men can take the position, but he leads a doomed assault anyway.

During the attack, some of the company refuse to advance. An enraged Mireau orders his artillery to shell his own men, but his order is refused. Mireau then insists that 100 men should be executed for cowardice. Broulard talks him down into executing only three men, one of whom is chosen randomly (Joe Turkel), another who is tagged in an act of revenge (Ralph Meeker), and an “undesirable” eccentric (Timothy Carey). The men are court-martialed, but they are not given the opportunity of a fair defense (Dax is their defense attorney) and are summarily sentenced.

The men agonize over their fate, but nothing can be done to save them. After a brutal night of waiting, the three are trotted out and shot. Dax protests vociferously to Broulard, letting him know that Mireau ordered an attack on his own men. Broulard throws Mireau under the bus, then offers Dax his command. Dax tells him to go to hell.

After this, Dax walks past a café in which his men are carousing. The café’s owner pushes a young German girl onto his stage, and she sings a plaintive song. The men initially hoot and whistle at her, but as she continues, the men grow silent and begin to weep and sing along with her. Dax is ordered to send his men back into the front lines, which he does reluctantly.

Kubrick gives us two primary locations: the elaborate mansion in which the generals live, eat well, and from which they issue their orders, and the trenches – muddy, shell-ravaged, covered with barbed wire and dead bodies. The gap between the rulers and ruled has rarely been so obvious. Kubrick’s camera tracks along with Dax as he stalks the trench, trying to lift his men’s morale. The filthy and despairing atmosphere of the battle front contrasts sharply with the generals’ mode of living.

The generals toy casually with the lives of their men. They reach out to destroy those who will not obey them. The infantrymen under them can do nothing but obey – or die. Dax’s outrage is our own.

The film was banned in many European countries for many years, supposedly for casting aspersions on the French army. Though it did not do well at the box office, it is considered a successful film and set Kubrick up for his next project with actor Douglas, 1960’s Spartacus.

The movie remains one of the most eloquent anti-war films ever made.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Sweet Smell of Success.

NFR Project: 'On the Bowery' (1957)

 

NFR Project: “On the Bowery”

Dir: Lionel Rogosin

Scr: Mark Sufrin

Pho: Richard Bagley

Ed: Carl Lerner

Premiere: 1956

65 min.

This uncompromising look at the lives of alcoholics living on the street in lower Manhattan is a tough watch. Anyone who has suffered or who knows someone who has suffered from alcoholism will find this familiar territory.

The film was the idea of Lionel Rogosin, who quit his job as a chemical engineer and began to work as a filmmaker. He wanted to make a movie about apartheid, but he chose this project first as a training exercise. He intended to indict capitalist society by showing what effects it had on the down and out. What he ended up with, however, was a simple and daunting profile of men at the end of their ropes.

The movie, shot in stark black and white, covers the lives of three men – Ray, a relatively young wanderer; Gorman, a veteran of the alleys; and Frank, who collects cardboard to make money and dreams of living in the South Seas. All three careen from bar to bar, and hit the streets, looking for day work or handouts that will fuel their drinking. Ray plans to give up the booze and get his life together, but fails miserably, time and again. Gorman, inured to the life, offers help and advice but can’t improve his own lot.

We follow Ray as he goes into a mission to get a meal, a bath, and a bed. He is forced to listen to a sermon and then given food and space on the floor to sleep. He abruptly leaves the mission and goes out drinking again. Gorman shares money with him that Gorman got by stealing Ray’s suitcase and selling all his belongings. Ray swears he will change his life this time – but by film’s end, we see him standing on a street corner, staring glassily into the distance.

Gorman died of cirrhosis before the film debuted. Ray lived only to 1963, also succumbing to the illnesses of alcoholism. The hopelessness of those who live only for the next drink is brutally illuminated. It will serve as a corrective to anyone thinking about ending their sobriety.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Paths of Glory.