Sweet Smell of Success

“Why is it everything you say sounds like a threat?” a United States senator asks gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), the hulking presence of Nietzsche’s Superman in Alexander MacKendrick’s wildly imaginative Sweet Smell of Success. Screaming brass jazz opens the film over the hustle of early morning newspaper distribution, establishing an unmistakable ambience of urban amorality — or “moral twilight” — in which the mutually parasitic relationship between Hunsecker and publicist Sydney Falco (Tony Curtis) can thrive like a two-headed snake. Falco’s professional security is clearly fragile given the business sign he tapes on his apartment door and his leaving his overcoat at home to avoid the need to tip coatroom attendants, but he’s in particular jeopardy since Hunsecker has shut out Falco’s clients from his column for the past five days because the publicist hasn’t been able to come up with a smear (or “item”) about Hunsecker’s younger sister’s jazz guitarist fiancée of whom the columnist disapproves. Falco’s efforts to whip up a scandal, which involve blackmail and selling his female friend as a whore, seem designed both to please Hunsecker and to spite him at the same time: such is the desperation of Falco’s chosen field. The actors playing the younger couple (Susan Harrison and Martin Milner) are fairly bland which is perhaps suitable in contrast to the two leads. The gorgeous B&W cinematography, lively score, and flirtations with direct (observational) cinema, especially in the clubs and restaurant scenes, help make Sweet Smell of Success a brilliant work in its own unique category.