Sweet Smell of Success

Sweet Smell of Success.
1957 Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions & United Artists; distributed to DVD by MGM.
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Available from Amazon.

J.J. Hunsecker (Lancaster) is New York City's most influential newspaper columnist, and the press agent Sidney Falco (Curtis) wants very badly to get his clients mentioned in the column. Falco has been unable to fulfill his promise to break up the romance between Hunsecker's sister Susan (Harrison) and jazz guitarist Steve Dallas (Milner), who the columnist disapproves of. He comes up with a plan to spread false rumors about Dallas being a dope smoking Communist in someone else's newspaper column, and then encourages J.J. to defend Steve in his own column, which would see the guitarist having to choose between his integrity and owing a favor to Hunsecker, who he can't stand. Falco's plan works, in a way: Susan breaks it off with Steve after he insults her brother, but only to protect him from J.J. The columnist still decides to leave nothing to chance, and against Falco's wishes, orders the agent to plant marijuana on Dallas, and have him arrested and roughed up by the corrupt police officer Harry Kello (Emile Meyer).

This plan works, but Falco and Hunsecker will eventually have to face their own consequences.

Sweet Smell of Success was based on Ernest Lehman's novelette, which appeared in a 1950 issue of Cosmopolitan, well before its days as a women's magazine. Lehman was originally slated to produce and direct the film adaptation after Hecht-Hill-Lancaster acquired the rights, but the producers instead selected Alexander Mackendrick, a British director who had recently began entertaining offers from Hollywood after his original employers, Ealing Studios, were purchased by the BBC in 1954, and he feared getting fired. The actual filming was an ordeal for Mackendrick, who found himself shooting script pages just one or two hours after they had been written by playwright Clifford Odets. Mackendrick also had to deal with shooting on location in New York at rush hour on its busiest streets, as well as the crowds of young Tony Curtis fans, who occasionally got past police barriers. "We knew where we were going vaguely, but that's all," he later said. Regardless of the difficulties in bringing Lehman's story to the screen, the finished product is a great, great film that was selected for inclusion in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1993.

Highly, highly, highly recommended.