Sweet Smell of Success Alexander Mackendrick Digital Life DVD

Sweet Smell of Success
starring: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison (II), Martin Milner, Sam Levene
directed by: Alexander Mackendrick

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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780792850168
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0792850165
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 19, 2001
Running Time: 96 minutes
Sales Rank: 9738
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: June 27, 1957

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Editorial Review:

Description:
A powerful film about a ruthless journalist and an unscrupulous press agent who'll do anything to achieve success, this fascinating, compelling story (The Hollywood Reporter) crackles with 'taut direction and whiplash dialogue (Time). Bristling with vivid performances by Curtis and Lancaster, this gutsy exposÃ(c) of big-city corruption is a timeless classic that cuts deep and sends a chilling message. It's late at night in the steamy, neon-lit streets of New York's Times Square, and everything's buzzing with nervous energy. But press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is oblivious to the whirlwind of street vendors, call girls and con men bustling around him as he nervously waits for the early edition of The Globe. Whose career did gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) launch today...and whose did he destroy?

Amazon.com essential video:
A classic of the late 1950s, this film looks at the string-pulling behind-the-scenes action between desperate press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) and the ultimate power broker in that long-ago show-biz Manhattan: gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). Written by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets (who based the Hunsecker character on the similarly brutal and power-mad Walter Winchell), the film follows Falco's attempts to promote a client through Hunsecker's column--until he is forced to make a deal with the devil and help Hunsecker ruin a jazz musician who has the nerve to date Hunsecker's sister. Director Alexander MacKendrick and cinematographer James Wong Howe, shooting on location mostly at night, capture this New York demimonde in silky black and white, in which neon and shadows share a scarily symbiotic relationship--a near-match for the poisonous give-and-take between the edgy Curtis and the dismissive Lancaster. --Marshall Fine

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Holy Crap!!
I always sort of put off seeing this even though I've heard good things about it. I think it was because Tony Curtis is in it and the only thing I've ever seen him do were really bad introductions to some Alfred Hitchcock DVDs. In those introductions, Curtis fumbled his lines (which were often filled with errors) and so I assumed he was the worst actor in the world. I should kick myself.

This movie is not only one of the best "noir" films I've seen but one of the best movies I've ever seen PERIOD.

It's included in the noir category despite it not being a crime drama at all. The reason for this is it's shadow-filled cinematography and its theme of corruption. According to this movie, human beings are bleak, cold-hearted creatures.

It's about a Broadway columnist (played by Burt Lancaster in one of his best roles) who manipulates everyone he comes in contact with. He ... Read More

Rating:

- Great film - Correct aspect ratio?
I'm not so sure about this being the wrong aspect ratio... IMDB shows it as 1.85:1 but they COULD be wrong.

The director, Alexander McKendrick, was brought over from Britians' Ealing studios to direct this film and the trend for British 'widescreen' was 1.66:1 (as it is today, as opposed to the common American film standard of 1.85:1). I'm assuming that since he was familiar with 1.66:1 he proposed filming it in that ratio to Burt Lancaster (who's production company produced it). There were not a lot of films being produced in a 'widescreen' format yet (1957) and there certainly were no established standards yet so, it was a very progressive decision they undertook.

This film looks marvelous on my Sony 52" LCD - properly anamorphic as far as I can discern. If we have, indeed, been shorted by a cropping of 1.66:1 from 1.85:1 then we may hope for a definitive Blu-ray release soon but, overall, ... Read More

Rating:

- Impeccable, influential noir.
Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander MacKendrick, 1957)

I've no idea where I got the notion that Sweet Smell of Success is a comedy-- perhaps it's because MacKendrick is these days best known for having directed The Ladykillers, of which the Coen brothers directed a quite useless remake a few years back-- but oh, how wrong I was. This is noir in all its glory, a film to rival Wilder's Ace in the Hole as the definitive muckraking-the-muckrakers movie. Where the latter film deals in the fabrication of news stories by drawing out a tragedy, Sweet Smell of Success gives us the relationship between press agent and columnist, and how that relationship can be abused.

Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is one of those press agents-- a slimy huckster who evades his clients and a would-be stringer for highly influential columnist J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). Hunsecker, however, has "frozen" Falco out of his ... Read More

Rating:

- The Real Price of Success
Apparently screenwriters when characterizing Broadway theater critics refuse to touch them with anything less than a cattle prod. At least that has been my recent film review experience after watching All About Eve and its totally cynical critic Addison played superbly by George Saunders. Here we are confronted with the weasel Broadway critic and man about town J.J played by Burt Lancaster ably assisted by press flak Sydney Falco played to a grovelling tee by Tony Curtis.

The story line is a little thin, mainly concerning J.J.'s overweening concern that his very much younger sister does not wind up with some ne'er do well. The tricks, manipulations, and down right skullduggery hatched up by this pair seem all to real to a modern audience who know that fame is fleeting and one better grab it by the neck, fast. More than a few bargains with the devil have been made fot that elusive commodity. The tricks ... Read More

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