And boy golly, does this one show a grim side of the species. A bleak and unsparing depiction of obeisance before power in a morally bankrupt culture, Sweet Smell of Success<\/em> started as a story screenwriter Ernest Lehman wrote for Cosmopolitan<\/em> magazine called \u201cTell Me About It Tomorrow!\u201d inspired by his early days working as an assistant to a press agent for The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>. Said press agent then refused to speak to Lehman for a year and a half after the story was published, which is entirely understandable if you\u2019ve seen the picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tony Curtis stars as Sidney Falco, a small-time publicist and inveterate hustler so low on the showbiz totem pole that his office (where he also sleeps) doesn\u2019t even have his name painted on the door, just a cardboard sign. Sidney schemes to get his clients mentioned by Burt Lancaster\u2019s kingmaker columnist, the immortally named J.J. Hunsecker, who rules New York City nightlife like a feudal lord. Long before we meet the character, we see a logo of his ominous eyeglasses looming over the action on Broadway billboards and passing news trucks, overseeing everything like if Dr. T.J. Eckleberg was a terrifying asshole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lancaster\u2019s crisp elocution was never put to more satisfyingly sinister ends, portraying the writer as a tightly-wound, sexless automaton. He\u2019s a man seemingly impervious to human feeling, one of those people often found in the entertainment industry where you can\u2019t understand how they ever got involved in show business because it\u2019s impossible to imagine them taking any pleasure in music or art. It\u2019s all simply land for him to conquer. Hunsecker\u2019s dead-eyed stare famously came from Lancaster smearing Vaseline on his glasses so he couldn\u2019t focus on anyone in front of him. It\u2019s how he seems to be looking through everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He certainly sees right through Sidney, and that\u2019s why he\u2019s unable to conceal his contempt for the younger man\u2019s cloying desperation. Falco doesn\u2019t mind, he just needs to get back into Hunsecker\u2019s good graces. To do that, he\u2019s tasked with sabotaging a relationship between an up-and-coming jazz musician (Martin Milner) and the columnist\u2019s sweetly na\u00efve sister (Susan Harrison), who doesn\u2019t have a shred of her big brother\u2019s ruthlessness. There\u2019s no way Hunsecker is going to let his baby sis run off with some musician, even if he\u2019s seemingly the only jazzman in 1950\u2019s New York City who doesn\u2019t do drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These young lovebirds are admittedly pretty boring\u2014so much so that the movie has trouble feigning interest in them for very long, and instead devotes most of the screen time to the toxic dance between Falco and Hunsecker. Shot in gorgeous, high-contrast chiaroscuro by the legendary James Wong Howe, Sweet Smell of Success<\/em> creates a seductive, nocturnal New York City that seems to be both glowing and rotting from within. The harsh light across Lancaster\u2019s eyeglasses paint the actor\u2019s face with shadows, giving the character a Mephistophelean leer. Lehman\u2019s script was heavily re-written by playwright Clifford Odets on set, sometimes the morning scenes were being filmed. It\u2019s said he could often be heard in a prop truck, typing some of the era\u2019s most indelible lines: \u201cThe cat\u2019s in the bag, the bag is in the river,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re a cookie full of arsenic,\u201d and my personal favorite, \u201cYou\u2019re dead, son. Get yourself buried.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s long been my pet theory that painting Falco as such a sycophantic twerp was Odets\u2019 way of purging his guilt for naming names as a friendly witness in front of the HUAC committee five years earlier. Curtis was hugely popular with young audiences \u2013 the Times Square shoots were frequently mobbed with gawking teenyboppers \u2013 and none of them were expecting a movie in which the up-and-coming heartthrob would turn out to be such a shit. You keep waiting for Sidney to suffer a serious pang of conscience and turn things around, to finally realize that there are some lows to which he won\u2019t sink for the sake of his career. And he never does. It\u2019s why audiences at the time didn\u2019t just dislike the movie, they deeply resented it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s also why it\u2019s aged so well. Watching it again for the first time in a couple decades, I was struck by how relevant Sweet Smell of Success<\/em> seems today, when we\u2019re seeing people who know better grovel and prostrate themselves for proximity to power on a daily basis, submitting to humiliation rituals live on cable news the way Sidney dutifully jumps to light Hunsecker\u2019s cigarettes. Turns out it\u2019s a whole country full of Falcos; cookies full of arsenic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sweet Smell of Success” is streaming on Kanopy<\/a>, Hoopla<\/a>, and Tubi<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Sweet-Smell-of-Success-still-1024x576.jpg\")
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