By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
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Vicious 1950s media satire starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis
Year: 1957
Certificate: pg
With its sparky dialogue, sure-footed direction and louche jazz score (by Elmer Bernstein), Sweet Smell Of Success is a time capsule of late-1950s style, but in its hard-bitten trawl of the dregs of celebrity culture, it still feels relevant today. Driven by the mutual loathing of its two leads – Burt Lancaster’s venomous celebrity columnist, JJ Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis’s boot-licking PR man, Sidney Falco – the plot sees Hunsecker trying to split up his sister and her jazz-musician boyfriend by manipulating sycophantic heel Falco.
Every line and jibe in the film finds its mark, and every conversation drills deeper into a character’s mind. The story is propelled by barbed exchanges, in particular those between Falco and his associates as he tears around the city trying to outmanoeuvre Hunsecker, while the audience scrambles to keep up with the film’s breakneck pace.
Curtis wanted to make the film to distance himself from his pretty-boy image, while director Alexander Mackendrick wanted to move on from his reputation as a director of ‘small, cute British comedies’ (namely, Ealing comedies such as The Ladykillers). Curtis had to fight for the role, because the studio was nervous he would lose his bankability along with that clean-cut image – but this wasn’t the film’s only problem. Original writer Ernest Lehman fell ill, Mackendrick was nervous of being sacked by the studio, and replacement writer Clifford Odets was still finishing the script long after shooting had started. Yet, in spite of all that, the film remains one of the best media satires of all time. (96 minutes)
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Sweet Smell Of Success
