Review of Sweet Smell of Success (1957) by David D — 23 May 2008

The Sweet Smell of Success feels a bit naive, though it investigates the media's darker underbrush. Falco (Tony Curtis), a struggling PR agent whose flexible ethics may or may not be stretched by his need for a buck (the type is that of today's New York City rental broker), has been maligned by Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), the all-powerful writer of the city's preëminent gossip column (a pale, echoing moon to Waldo Lydecker's sun in Laura), and now must go beyond brown nosing into slander and conspiracy to win back the writer's good graces.

The victim is a jazz guitarist who is dating Hunsecker's younger sister Susan (theirs is possibly the least healthy sibling relationship you've seen onscreen, and she wears a fur coat as a not-too-unpleasant symbol of her shacklesâ??tough life, being emotionally controlled and manipulated by a silver spoon).

But, after a few plot twists and turns, the victim becomes Falcoâ??Susan discovers Falco's responsibility for the frame-up, and then frames him in front of her brother for attempted rape (when Falco thought he was actually rescuing her from attempted suicide); in his defense, Falco blurts out that Hunsecker had put him up to the initial frame-up, and Susan finally gathers up the gumption to leave her brother's custody.

Again, everybody is plain old mean and ugly, but this time they at least rather witty, so much so, in the case of Hunsecker, that we almost feel sorry when he loses his sister, even if he deserved it.

Of course, in this film, procrastination is far less germane, as everyone is in a constant hurry to act Now!, it being New York, life being hand-to-mouth, and newspapers being a deadline-oriented business.