150 Word Review: 'The Sweet Smell of Success' (1957)
True love doesn’t stand a chance
Director Alexander Mackendrick's stylish noir, The Sweet Smell of Success, is a snappy story about all the sleazy things a man will do for a cookie-sized amount of power. The screenplay by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets oozes glamor and greed.
The movie is mostly a hard-boiled dialogue duet between Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, two great actors whose different styles harmonize perfectly. One is a hack gossip columnist, the other a sweaty PR agent; both feed on each other like Mad Men-era vampires. Lancaster is as smooth as a snake shedding his skin, and Curtis is oily with ambition. “The boy with the ice cream face” is what Lancaster’s character calls him. Curtis' Falco spends most of the movie melting.
The other main character: New York, a "dirty town" corrupt from its skyscrapers' tippy-top to the sewers' muck. It’s a sinister metropolis full of crooked cops, politicians, and newspapermen.