I have always found that certain tracks on Elmer Bernstein’s (and Chico Hamilton’s) soundtrack for Sweet Smell of Success seem a little too loud. This is a stupid comment, but there’s a truth in it. Some of the brassy pulsating beats and score movements of Bernstein’s fierce beast of a score come off as just tipping over the edge of the decibels that any speaker will allow. One specific moment comes to mind in the film, Burt Lancaster’s J.J Hunsecker looking out over night time in New York, the blinding lights and the tremendously squeezed hustle and bustle of the busy Times Square, Bernstein’s score pounding underneath... before we fade to the morning after, the score grows softer before fading away, the lights are no more and the streets (albeit morning) are emptier than what was before the middle of the night. It’s a startling image of sensationalism and it’s a score that fits the image and the film perfectly. For Success is of course above anything else, a film all about the dangers, lucrative nature and power of sensationalism in the media. Yes, Sweet Smell of Success is more relevant now than ever, but it was always relevant and it always will be, but most importantly it will always be one of the finest films of all time.

Credit

Included on Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” list, one of the Martin Scorseses’s personally believed “Greatest films ever made”, Tony Curtis’s favourite film of his own and frankly one of the most critically beloved and acclaimed films of all time; Sweet Smell of Success is a blistering tale of newspaper politics down in the alleys away from the office. It’s the tale of the runners and those underneath the top-dogs peddling the tabloid babble that so many gravitate towards, lapping up any at all salacious gossip that Hunsecker can offer. As a matter of fact we don’t meet Hunsecker until a good thirty minutes in the film have already passed, building up with great pace and one of the most dynamic and acerbic scripts of all time the myth and legend of the man in whispers and comments before we even get a chance to catch a glimpse of the man. When we do of course we find Burt Lancaster, looking as pristine and icy as he ever has, in his first shot you’d think the man had never dropped a beat of sweat in his life. Over the course of the film of course we find where his perspiration comes from, primarily in the case of his sister Susan Hunsecker, played in her film debut by a fragile and elegantly quiet Susan Harrison. Lancaster as Hunsecker is a thing of pure perfection, every word out of his mouth is specifically chosen and pointed and placed like a dagger. It is no great stretch for any audience member to believe him as this titan of the written word. Prior to that as aforementioned we encounter first Sideny Falco, portrayed with a grinning desperation and sleazy charm by Tony Curtis. I do firmly believe that this is both Curtis and Lancaster’s best work, both of them inhabiting perfectly these rather villainous creations from Ernest Lehman’s original short story, eventually re-written in part by both Clifford Odets and the director Alexander Mackendrick. Curtis in particular pleads with every man and woman in town with dirty deals and little side-hustles here and there, eventually all intertwining in a web of what we think will reap success, but in actuality reaps quite the opposite.

Credit

Despite its original budget of $600,000 eventually ballooning into $2.6 million, the film still has a gristly and gritty feel, there’s no time for studio lots, we are deep in the dirt of a filthy New York. Not underground, but rather in the underbelly of Broadway, as it rears its ugly rear once the facade of stars and publicity niceties fade away. The script here is of course the films greatest asset, thrillingly unknowable as it shifts from twist to twist, page after page. All the while we have our characters, whether they be our leads, or the many wonderful realised people we come across along the way, each one perfectly fitting of the world that has been created by Mackendrick and our plethora of writers. The undercurrent darkness and seediness never fails to shine itself through at all turns. There’s a power in the filth and the dirt that this film sits in and every actor and every crew-member knows it. The film was shot in stunning black and white by James Wong Howe, with those evervescent glowing bulbs of Broadway bursting through every moment. Sweet Smell of Success in so many ways really is just as good as it gets, when it comes to film Noir, or frankly film in general. The direction, the writing, the acting, the cinematography, every single element just comes to a glorious culmination of profound power and effect.

Credit

It's under question how much of the final script was down to Clifford Odets and how much was down to Ernest Lehman but, whoever wrote it, thank God that they did! The film has one of the best scripts of all time and Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster take great pleasure in bringing the acid soaked words of the written page and firing them at one another with such precision that it’s almost too much to bear. The poster read that that it was “the motion picture that will never be forgiven – or forgotten”. I can’t vouch for those who were so blissfully tarnished by the film that they can’t forgive the thing, but I can agree with those many who will never forget it. Simply sensational.

-          -Thomas Carruthers