TCM Pick O’ The Day: Saturday, January 31st
by John Nolte
Match me, Sidney.
8pm PST - Sweet Smell Of Success (1957) – A crooked press agent stoops to new depths to help an egotistical columnist break up his sister’s romance. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Marty Milner Dir: Alexander Mackendrick BW-96 mins, TV-PG
You could fill pages about the complete greatness of this film, but when all is said and done what impresses most is how so much character and so many plot turns all fit into 96 minutes. As Burt Prelutsky points out in this essay, the all important art of pacing has pretty much vanished in Big Hollywood. When raunchy sex comedies start clocking in at 126 minutes, the canary in the coalmine to warn you something’s gone horribly wrong is long, long dead.
This will sound off-topic for a bit, but hang in, we’ll get there. The reason Gary Oldman’s such a perfect choice for Commissioner Gordon in the new “Batman” series is because we all know Oldman is (on screen) a wild man. To take an actor capable of anything and button him firmly down is genius. The tension this adds for the audience (who know what boils beneath the milquetoast) adds a dimension no script could. The same can be said for Burt Lancaster here.
Lancaster is wonderful in roles requiring him to look to the sky, open his arms, and launch that second-to-none smile, but shut him down, button him up, cork the volcano and then you really got yourself a character. “The Train,” “The Birdman of Alcatraz…” The stoic Lancaster is the one raging with possibilities, which finally brings me to his role in today’s pick.
J.J. Hunsecker, who’s supposedly based on columnist Walter Winchell, is one of the all-time great screen monsters. Other than ambition and obsession (with his own sister, no less), Lancaster shuts off Hunsecker’s humanity. Elmer Gantry goes shark, his eyes dead, his only desire to feed his own desires; a killer who won’t be negotiated with, but try to deal with the devil Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) does.
Damn these people who say Curtis was just a pretty face or only remember his Brooklyn accent in “Spartacus.” You hold your own with Burt Lancaster – you go toe toe in scene after scene and come out in one piece and you better believe you’re a hall of famer. Curtis is an absolute knock out here. His Sidney Falco is layered thick with conflict and so tortured with self-loathing you wince right along with him as he suffers one humiliation after another. You feel for this character and you root for him to find the courage to give up on his ambition. Certainly part of that is great screenwriting, but you watch this film and imagine Matthew McConaughey in the Curtis role. That’ll box your compass.
Another of the film’s stars is the mostly on-location black and white photography. Everything from the city streets to the nightclub where Hunsecker holds court to Falco’s seedy office-apartment is an added character helping to complete this world and tell an engrossing story about the small, vapid, worthless crumbs men sell their souls for.
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28 Comments
“The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river.”
As my 16 year old daughter said after watching Burt Lancaster in a TCM movie with me – “Mom! They sure don’t make’em like him any more – a real man!”
The men in Hollywood are gone, all we have left are the little spoiled boys. Haven’t seen this movie, but it is now on my Netflix Queue.
Although I’ve only seen Burt Lancaster in a handful of films (Sweet Smell Of Success, Elmer Gantry, Run Silent,Run Deep, The Midnight Man, Vera Cruz, Gunfight At The O.K. Corral, The Train, Scorpio), his performance as Hunsecker is his best in my opinion.
There are times when I see Hunsecker as an intimidating figure, a sinister puppeteer and as a pathetic human being. A very memorable performance.
As for Tony Curtis as Falco, I actually don’t root for him. I see his character as just a peddler who may still have a conscience, but ultimately remains a slave to his ambitions, and when he vows to bring Hunsecker down, it’s only after the cat comes out of the bag and Hunsecker sics Kello (the cop) on him.
There’s a reason Tait Ruppert recites lines from this movie in “Diner” – the genius of Ernie Lehman – http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0499626/ – who wrote the novella and screenplay. I believe he was writing about Walter Winchell, but I never asked him or researched it. Ernie was so damned good you never thought about the script – the Jimmy Stewart of screenwriters.
Bam! Right into my Netflix queue.
thx.
I thought I read a few years ago that John Cusack wanted to remake this with himself in the Tony Curtis role. Thank God that still hasn’t seen the light of day. There are too many remakes already.
You are the only contributor to this site that I read.
Agree, great movie…but I believe most of the complaints about Curtis’ accent involved The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), famous for his line “..yonda lies da castle of my fadda.” He co-starred with Janet Leigh, who wore a bra as pointy as her 15th century headgear.
This film is part of my annual “Burt Lancaster is Evil” film festival, along with the marvelous Seven Days in May. Lancaster is a great hero in many films, but he makes the perfect villain.
Couldn’t agree more. I love, love, love this film.
…” The stoic Lancaster is the one raging with possibilities…”
Ditto for Lancaster in “From Here to Eternity” & in “The Rose Tattoo.” Burt is especially unpredictable & powerful when cast next to the great screen presence of Anna Magnini w/ her world weary sexual magnetism a la Tenessee Williams.
I love Tony Curtis in this movie – he’s all striving energy, it’s painful how much he wants to BE somebody.
*Clive James has this great chapter in his book, Cultural Amnesia, about Tony Curtis. It’s a funny, rambling book, and it’s a good chapter on the actor.
Yup, this film is memorably pungent. Downright nasty.
Great jazzy score by Elmer Bernstein too.
Another great performance by Burt Lancaster, playing against his old
Alpha male image, was in Atlantic City, as a pathetic old never-was trying to play out his fantasy of being important, powerful, etc.
He deserved an Oscar for it (got nominated).
Great bit of dialogue, capturing the folly of pointless nostalgia:
“You should have seen the Atlantic Ocean back in those days.
It was something then.”
Damn these people who say Curtis was just a pretty face or only remember his Brooklyn accent in “Spartacus.”
I agree. Curtis was a woefully underrated actor. He was great in “The Boston Stranger” and “Some Like It Hot.” But Falco was his best role.
Oops, that should of course be “Boston Strangler”
I gotta tell you, Mr. Shillue, I’m 25 and I KNOW I haven’t seen everything.
I know what you mean, though, about seeing films like Sweet Smell Of Success for the first time when you’re in your mid-20s (I saw Sweet Smell Of Success for the 1st time when I was 24). It always amazes me when I see gems like Sweet Smell Of Success for the first time.
Donna V. Excellent call on “The Boston Strangler.” I had the pleasure of meeting Curtis at an autograph show ($50 pleasure but worth every cent, especially when I caught him eyeing my wife she still talks about it) and the photo I had him sign was from BS.
Tom — don’t feel bad, I didn’t see this until I was well into tmy thirties.
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