Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

“You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.”

–J.J. Hunsecker

There’s a startling moment midway through Alexander Mackendrick’s 1957 film noir gem, Sweet Smell of Success, when Burt Lancaster, playing ruthless media tycoon J.J. Hunsecker, looks down from his penthouse balcony at a teeming, neon- and headlight-lit avenue in downtown New York, and the whole scene seems to flare up like a flash popping. It’s like Satan looking down in wonder on one of the deepest circles of hell. Sweet Smell of Success was the kind of American film that drove French critics crazy. How could Hollywood, that Mammon-worshipping celluloid sausage factory, keep producing one-off pictures so brutally honest—with dialogue you’d have to handle with welder’s gloves to avoid getting cut? I don’t think the French ever solved that mystery, and as the second Gulf War begins to play out they probably feel like extras in a film noir version of global realpolitik.
Film noir is a look and a tone. Crisp black and white photography. Almost everything shot at night and in interiors. Neon and streetlights reflecting off the mirror finishes of big black Buicks. Chain smoking as a martial art. Everyone on the move and on the make. The atmosphere is hard-edged, rife with cynicism, self-interest, and disillusion.
I doubt anyone could have made Sweet Smell of Success look better than it does. The cinematographer was James Wong Howe, one of the finest cameramen Hollywood ever produced. Howe worked his way up from being a slate boy for Cecil B. DeMille in 1917 to a career behind the lens that spanned six decades and hundreds of productions. He pioneered the use of deep-focus photography and hand-held cameras, won two Academy Awards, and received ten nominations for Best Cinematography. With photography by Howe, music by Elmer Bernstein and the Chico Hamilton Quintet, dialogue by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, set design by Edward G. Boyle and Alexander Mackendrick’s skilful handling of his actors, it’s hardly surprising that Sweet Smell of Success turned out to be one of the 1950’s most potent looks at the dark side of the American dream. Equally unsurprising was its total failure at the box office. No heroes here.
Co-stars Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis were at the top of their forms. This might be Curtis’s best film. He plays the role of Sydney Falco, press agent to two-bit talents and soon-to-be-has-beens, pander, and pawn to the high and the mighty. As J.J. Hunsecker describes him: “a man of 40 faces—none too pretty, and all deceptive.” To cop Falco’s own words, he’s always running a fifty-yard dash with his legs cut off. What keeps him going is his certainty that past the finish line the track is made of gold. He’ll use anyone, any way, to get across that line. Check out the expression on the face of cigarette girl Rita (Barbara Nichols) when she realizes the guy she’s sweet on has just pimped her to a sleazy columnist, for a few career-destroying lines in the morning paper.
There’s an unpleasant metaphor operating throughout the film: It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Have you ever stopped to think of what that’s actually saying? Dog eat dog? What kind of ugly little world did that cliché come from? Put it alongside the title Sweet Smell of Success and you gain a new appreciation of irony: What is it that you usually see dogs smelling? Near the end of the film, Falco tells Hunsecker that he doesn’t mind wearing his dog collar as long as it doesn’t turn into a noose (it already has). He’s lying about liking that collar, but he’s dead serious about being willing to walk around on a leash as long as it’s held by the right set of (very powerful) hands. Besides, isn’t there another old saying about every dog having his day?
Falco can bear with the degradation and routine humiliation because he sees himself as a greyhound racing with pit bulls. Any one of them could tear him apart on a whim, but he’s smarter and faster. Others have made it to that golden finish line, and so can he.
Yeah, right.
The nastiest pit bull of them all is J.J. Hunsecker, owner of the New York Globe tabloid newspaper, self-styled Voice of America on his own TV show, maker and breaker of reputations, mover and shaker in a world filled with “the greedy murmur of little men.” In one of film noir’s great lines, he’s described as having the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster. Burt Lancaster chews this role up and spits it out with lethal venom. Hunsecker stands on a neon-washed corner of 42nd Street, thinks of everyone he’s bought and sold, and exclaims, “I love this dirty town!” It’s like Robert Duvall standing on the beach in Apocalypse Now, shouting “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!” Hunsecker’s left hand hasn’t seen what his right hand’s been doing in thirty years. The cats are in the bags, and the bags are all in the river. All’s well with the world.
Almost.
The only person Hunsecker actually pretends to care about is his younger sister, Susan (Susan Harrison). It would be nice if he cared about her because she’s sweet and sexy and vulnerable and surrounded by pit bulls. The truth is that she’s simply the most valuable thing he owns. If she acts recklessly, it’s because her brother has her closed so tightly in a gilded cage that it’s choking her to death. She’s got just enough room to play the one role Hunsecker treasures most—victim. The film suggests that she’s passed through some rough hands—probably including Falco’s. Hunsecker’s is the most sadistic kind of love: terrorize and marginalize the person closest to you by isolating her, and then grandstand the role of protector by savaging anyone drawn in by the scent of fear and frustrated desire. The cycle repeats as the so-called “protection” creates new fear and more instability. Hunsecker has one striking moment of near self-awareness when, at the climax of an argument, he tells her, “You’ve had your say, let me have mine!” Susan replies, “But I haven’t said anything, JJ.” For a split second, he stares at her and realizes that she’s absolutely right, and that the entire scene is of his own making. The moment passes.
Hunsecker’s world starts to unravel when Suzie beats the odds and happens to fall in love with someone who, wonder of wonders, isn’t on the make. Steve Dallas (Martin Milner) is a straight-as-a-board guitar player in a jazz quintet. For once, Hunsecker has nothing to “save” his sister from. If he’s going to get Suzie away from Dallas and keep her in her cage, he’s going to have to have a scripted scenario that’s more Machiavellian than usual. Sometimes even the Devil needs a Mephistopheles.
Enter Falco, still running. Still heading for that fifty-yard line. Still climbing that golden ladder. Mr. Everyone-and-Everything’s-Expendable. The Hunseckers of this world giveth and taketh away. Trash a couple more lives for the boss and a shot at the Big Time? You betcha. Honest guys are chumps and deserve whatever they get for believing the world cares? You betcha. Women are all nervous and incompetent and think with their hips instead of their heads? You got it. Falco’s making the Big Move…
This being film noir, you might expect things to turn out badly for all concerned. Fortunately, they don’t. Not quite. There’s a little ray of hope at the end. I think it’s a cheat—the only misstep in an unflinching portrait of amorality and hypocrisy all wrapped up in suits, threadbare or tailor-made, of self-righteousness. Maybe director Mackendrick was just trying to look on the bright side; then again, maybe he was told that was the only way his picture would make it out of the storeroom and into the theatres.

Looking Back & Second Thoughts

“I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.” – J.J. Hunsecker

“I love this dirty town.” – J.J. Hunsecker

April may be the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead earth, but the Sweet Smell of Success is the cruellest movie. Knives out. We all know that words can be weapons, that they can slice and dice, and they’ve never been deadlier that they are with Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster eviscerating one another, and anyone close to them, in this 1950s masterpiece. Even the hardest-boiled film noir can’t match the sustained vitriol of Success. There may not be actual bodies lying around at the end of the film, but there’s no shortage of the walking dead. Lancaster and Curtis were never better, Susan Harrison and Barbara Nichols provide affecting portraits of collateral damage; and the rest of the casting is perfect. Kudos to Elmer Berstein and the Chico Hamilton Quintet for the classic jazz-noir soundtrack. If anyone wants to know how good black & white films can be, point them towards Sweet Smell of Success.

‘Nuff said. This is a film you want to experience, not spend more time listening to me tell you why.

This time around, however, I did take the time to watch the supplementary features on the Criterion DVD for Success. There’s an excellent, hour-long documentary on Sweet Smell of Success’s director, Alexander Mackendrick. Even though I’d been impressed by other Mackendrick films–Whiskey Galore, The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers–I’d known nothing about his background or career. Here was a man who’d made some memorable films, yet chose to walk away from directing to take up a teaching position as Dean of the Film Department at the California Institute of the Arts. I’d guess that the mention of his name, except to those familiar with the products of the Ealing Studios in England, would garner a lot of blank looks.

The DVD also has a half-hour documentary on cinematographer James Wong Howe, including a lesson from Howe on various ways of lighting an interior scene. Howe’s lighting and camerawork in Success is a master class in itself. I don’t know if any other film has done a better job of capturing the essence of New York’s neon-lit, predatory night life.

Yet another 40-minute documentary explores the career of Walter Winchell, who was the model for J.J. Hunsecker in the same way that William Randolph Hearst was Charles Foster Kane’s. I had no idea that Ed Sullivan’s pre-television career was as Winchell’s main rival in the gossip column wars. It’s like suddenly discovering that your favorite uncle was once an enforcer for the Mob.

An essay on Sweet Smell of Success is included in the first of Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies anthologies. The Criterion DVD comes with its own 50-page booklet. Success is also reviewed in Danny Peary’s excellent Guide for the Film Fanatic, David Thomson’s Have You Seen…?, and any number histories of film noir.

From the reviews:

The two men in Sweet Smell of Success relate to each other like junkyard dogs. One is dominant, and the other is a whipped cur, circling hungrily, his tail between his legs, hoping for a scrap after the big dog has dined….Although Falco is in exile as the story opens, Hunsecker cannot quite banish him from his sight, because he needs him. How does the top dog know he rules unless the bottom dog slinks around? – Roger Ebert

It’s an ugly, dark (James Wong Howe filmed in noir style) world full of paranoia, hatred, hustling, squirming, backbiting, lying, blackmailing, sex traded for favors, schemes, threats, broken dreams, ruined lives, money, and power. [Clifford] Odets often wrote about young men who sell out their scruples for money and fame and make a pact (a contract, a deal) with a heartless figure who’s on an express to hell. -Danny Peary

It wasn’t intended. No one could have predicted it. But Sweet Smell of Success turned out to be a terminus where several movie genres and subgenres converged and curdled, producing a uniquely delicious perfume of everlasting cynicism. Inhale deeply….

Susie is the movie’s dumdum bullet aimed at [Walter] Winchell, whose obsession with the romantic life of his daughter Walda led him to incarcerate her as emotionally unstable while hounding, with the help of J. Edgar Hoover, her lover into leaving the United States…..

[James Wong] Howe was renowned for replicating and heightening reality, and for solving problems that stumped directors and actors. He made his mark despite endemic racism that obstructed him at every turn. During the height of his career as Warner Bros.’ chief cameraman, in the 1940s, he wore an “I Am Chinese” badge to prevent internment in a camp for Japanese Americans, and was prevented from marrying his Caucasian wife for almost a decade, until California’s miscegenation laws were repealed….

Hunsecker’s delayed appearance [in the film] exemplifies what Orson Welles once described as the Mr. Wu device, after the 1913 play of that name: for an hour, everyone talks about the mysterious Mr. Wu, wo that his arrival is the play’s dramatic high point. – Gary Giddins, “The Fantastic Falco”

There was an interesting pattern to Clifford [Odets]’s work on the successive drafts of a scene. During a story conference, he would improvise in the way an actor does, sometimes using a tape recorder, more often just taking and making notes. Then he would go off on his own to sketch out a scene that he would come back and read (perform in fact) for our benefit…the scene would usually be horrendously overwritten and much too long. Then he would set about cutting it down quite ruthlessly. Clifford was, in fact much more drastic in the editing of his own first drafts than any other writer I have worked with. In effect, during this process he would reduce the scene to a bare bones of the essential moves of the dramatic action. All that would be left were the key lines that triggered a shift in the story, a peripety of some kind…..Odets, describing his methods of fashioning a tightly knit and dense script, offered this advice: see that each of the characters arriving in a confrontation scene comes with ammunition…An argument is, in this sense, like a chess or card game…. – Alexander Mackendrick, On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director, edited by Paul Cronin.

Movie Information

Genre: Drama | Film Noir
Director: Alesander Mackendrick
Actors: Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Susan Harrison, Barbara Nichols, Martin Milner, Jeff Donnell, Emile Meyer
Year: 1957
Country:
Original Review: April 2003

Cyberspace:

Early animated short films–the art of Winsor McCay

Before there was Jurassic Park, there was Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur (1914):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32pzHWUTcPc [silent]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDrAjHeQMf4 [with music]

And before Gertie, McCay had tackled Little Nemo (1911):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8qow7jTyoM

Pete Beard has given us a fine, 12-minute documentary on the artist: The Art & Imagination of Winsor McCay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxDTj3tQZUs

The Bodyguard’s Apprentice: Transforming Adolescent Rage into Queer Empowerment in Popular Culture from Rebel Without a Cause (1955) to Moonlight (2016)

https://brightlightsfilm.com/bodyguards-apprentice-transforming-adolescent-rage-queer-empowerment-popular-culture-rebel-without-cause-1955-moonlight-2016/

This long-form essay by Walter Rankin, appearing in the Bright Lights Film Journal in 2017, reviews homoerotic elements in teen characters in cinema and television and the evolution from LGBT non-representation to respect. From the conclusion:

In “Stereotype or Success? Prime-Time Television’s Portrayals of Gay Male, Lesbian, and Bisexual Characters” (2006), Raley and Lucas apply a chronology and categorization scheme first developed by Clark (1969) to look at the portrayal of ethnic minorities. The scheme starts with non-representation and then moves to ridicule, regulation (being portrayed only in socially acceptable roles), and, finally, respect (23). Borrowing freely from their study for this piece, I see Rebel Without a Cause, My Bodyguard, Heathers, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 as non-representation blended with ridicule. None of these films has a clearly identified queer character, but that implication of queerness – and all of its negativity – becomes a focal point for its straight characters. These works also precede Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (1993), DOMA (1996), and the brutal killing of Matthew Shepard (1998). Buffy the Vampire Slayer, A History of Violence, and The Guest confront ridicule head-on, moving beyond regulation and demanding respect through violent, necessary confrontations. The first two also precede landmark LGBTQ moments, including the Matthew Shepard Act (2009), the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (2010), and the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Marriage Equality (2013)

In the past year alone, we have moved into a remarkable period with realistic films like Moonlight and multiple series that embrace LGBTQ youth, including Stranger Things, Eyewitness (which centers on two gay teenagers who witness a murder while making out), a reimagined One Day at a Time (with a Hispanic lesbian daughter), The Real O’Neals (based on an idea by Dan Savage), and Riverdale (where Kevin Keller makes out with closeted football player Moose Mason). Of special note is the streaming series 13 Reasons Why, which completely flips Rebel’s Jim/Plato roles by having straight Clay (Dylan Minnette) be coached and protected by openly gay, street-tough Tony (Christian Navarro), whose leather jacket, slicked-back hair, and retro-cool car evoke James Dean. On each of these series, the gay teens do not need straight mentors to serve as their bodyguards and protectors; rather, they stand strong on their own, due at least in part to the explosive force of the Platos, Willows, and Lukes before them.

Breaking Out of the #MeToo Movie Formula: How “Women Talking” and “Tár” make the discourse around the movement feel thrillingly unfamiliar”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/movies/tar-women-talking-metoo.html?algo=clicks_norm_diversified&block=3&campaign_id=142&emc=edit_fory_20230104&fellback=true&imp_id=476117872&instance_id=81845&nl=for-you&nlid=7605539&pool=pool%2F6b630657-ed29-4e37-8383-38e7218df42a&rank=1&regi_id=7605539&req_id=734206093&segment_id=121583&surface=for-you-email-serendipity&user_id=94967eccee1a3cd588551282a39025f7&variant=0_combo_lda_clicks_norm_20_diversified

Critic Amanda Hess describes how two recent films challenge the viewer in new ways. From the article:

“Women Talking” is all about debate. The crimes themselves are sketched in exposition; for years, women in the colony had awakened dazed and bloodied in their beds. Their elders dismiss the rapes as the work of devils, or else the “wild female imagination,” until the rapists are caught in the act. When the colony’s men head to town to post their bail, the women assemble in a hayloft to argue their options: They can do nothing; stay and fight; or leave. By film’s end, conversations that had grown so tedious on the internet had been reborn as riveting, hilarious, tragic. I cried through the whole movie, rationing tissues from a little plastic packet until all that was left was the wrapper crinkling in my hands.

Films Worth Talking About:

Throne of Blood, Touch of Evil, Saint Joan, Island in the Sun, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Le Beau Serge (Bitter Reunion), The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Seventh Seal, Funny Face, Kanal, A Face in the Crowd, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Sweet Smell of Success, Twelve Angry Men, An Affair to Remember, Aparajito (The Unvanquished), White Nights, A King in New York, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Wild Strawberries, Raintree County, Les Girls, Silk Stockings, Jailhouse Rock, Don Quixote, Paths of Glory

The Bigger Picture

Films: The Maltese Falcon (1941), All About Eve (1950), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Music: The Chico Hamilton Quintet: Complete Recordings 1953-58; anything by Emmer Bernstein, including Elmer Bernstein’s Film Music Collection, limited-edition boxed set, currently on Amazon for a mere $1,833.83

Books: Alain Silver and James Wong Howe, James Wong Howe: The Camera Eye: A Career Interview; Alexander Mackendrick, On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director, edited by Paul Cronin; Ernest Lehman, Sweet Smell of Success: The Short Fiction of Ernest Lehman.

The Word on the Street

Outstanding dialog. I can’t recall a film in which I heard so many clever film-noir lines as this one. Almost everyone in the movie has a unique way of expressing their feelings. It makes the movie one that you want to go back and HEAR again. Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay and deserve special recognition…A big name in the film business, James Wong Howe, more than lives up to his reputation. This is beautifully photographed and looks absolutely stunning on DVD. I have watched hundreds and hundreds of black-and-white films and this ranks with the best of them. He captured nighttime New York City as well as anybody ever has done. [ccthemovieman-1

Remember how scary Robert Mitchum was in Night of the Hunter? Or Darth Vader in the first Star Wars movie? Well Burt Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker is right up there with them. With his clipped words, ice-cold gaze, rigid neck and steel-rimmed glasses, he looks like he’s ready to break people in half with just the power of his voice. He drifts through the film like an unstoppable barge, commanding every scene with just the turn of his head. Seldom is there such a powerful screen presence. [bregund]

Everything about this movie seems to be nearly perfect (some have criticised the film for the relatively weak portrayal of the two hapless lovers, but a stronger emphasis on these two would only detract from the real focus–JJ and Sidney) even to the choice of names. JJ Hunsecker and Sidney Falco seem perfect monikers, by themselves conjuring up images of loathsome characters. Unfortunately, for the team that put together this masterpiece of film-noir, “Sweet Smell of Success” was no success, and critics and movie-goers alike left the theaters convinced that the “smell” generated by the film was far from sweet. Amazingly, this film not only failed to garner an Oscar, it failed to receive a single solitary nomination–not for Alexander Mackendrick’s direction (this abject failure truncating his promising career), not for the incisive, endlessly quotable screenplay (Ernest Lehman & Clifford Odets), not Elmer Bernstein’s wonderful score, nor the tremendous performances of Curtis and Lancaster–not even James Wong Howe’s gritty cinematography, beautifully capturing the seamier side of New York City. Fortunately, history has stepped in to provide a more accurate critique of this once ignored masterpiece. [twm-2]

The on location photography is stunning. What is amazing is that at the time the movie was made (1957) on location filming was just becoming “in vogue”. For a film like this, it HAD to filmed on location or else it’s power would be substantially diluted. I work in Manhattan near where a lot of this film was made (J.J. lives in the Brill Building which is on Broadway between 49th and 50th Streets, right around the corner from me). To see what the neighborhood looked like over 40 years ago is amazing. Surprisingly, it’s the astonishing on site photography that prevents the film from really feeling dated. [chconnol]

In its April 2000 issue, “Vanity Fair” ran a brilliant article by Sam Kashner about the making of the film, “A Movie Marked Danger”. Kashner’s research was deep and it cut deep. The story and the characters behind the camera were just as intriguing as the ones in front. I kept that issue for years…..Kashner gave background on each of the stars, but one seemed particularly enigmatic, Susan Harrison. He claimed she had problems and disappeared from the Hollywood scene a few years after the film was made and could not be located.
She hadn’t totally disappeared though, it appears she opted out of Hollywood to raise a family. She actually gave a 2011 interview about the making of the movie where she said it had been particularly democratic on set with opinions welcomed. Fascinating! She died in 2019, the last of the principals involved in the film. [tomsview]

The wonderful Barbara Nichols is simply outstanding as a cocktail waitress with a heart of gold exploited by Curtis and forced into a seeming act of prostitution with client David White. Jeff Donnell, as Curtis’s secretary who has her desk outside his bedroom, makes the most of her brief appearance at the beginning, having a breakdown that made me want to see more of this pathetic character. Edith Atwater, as Lancaster’s no-nonsense secretary, gets to be quite a bit tougher than the other women and get some of the film’s best lines. [mark.waltz]