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.