Short Film Clips
Sweet Smell Of Success, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, 1957
Apparently 1950s Hollywood screenwriters when
characterizing Broadway theater critics refused to touch them with anything
less than a cattle prod, if that close (perhaps in the inevitable “real” theater –“bubblegum” movies
cultural clash this is where they got their revenge, so be it). At least that
has been my recent film review experience after watching – All About Eve and it’s
totally cynical critic Addison as he adds fuel to the fire of Anne Bancroft ‘s
Eve take-no-prisoners- rise against watch out Bette Davis played superbly by
George Saunders and the film under review .
In Sweet Smell
Of Success we are confronted with the weasely Broadway critic and man-
about- town J. J., played by Burt Lancaster, ably assisted by press flak Sydney
Falco played to a groveling tee by Tony Curtis. Now on Broadway and in Hollywood
, and we can add Washington politics and cable television mass media into the mix,
information is power. And J.J. has the
information to be used like some god for good or evil, and mainly for evil. Although
some wit, some long lost wit, once aired the thought that the only bad publicity
was no publicity for those reaching for the stars that ain’t necessarily so. As some minor characters, an errant younger sister ‘s boyfriend, and as Brother
Falco find out. J.J. is the past master
of the blind shot, the groin chop, the innuendo, the false fact that have today
become common staple of reporting life.
The story line here though 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 downright
skullduggery seem all too real to a modern audience who know that fame is
fleeting and one better grab it by the neck, fast. The tricks(the old dope,
boy, stashed in the pocket routine, for example ) played in this film set in
1950s Broadway, however, seem almost like kid’s stuff compared to the vicious
action today. That, my friends, was something of a ‘golden age’ of gentile
skullduggery by comparison.
A note on Tony Curtis who on the face of it seems in
cinematic history to have been written of something of a ‘pretty’ boy, just
another lure for the girl moviegoers. But then you think about the fine performance
here against type and in Spartacus
and in Some Like It Hot and one,
including this reviewer, is compelled to start changing one’s opinion of the
depth of Mr. Curtis’s talent. 
