Artist Sweet Smell Of Success

Because of film noir’s genre underpinnings, smart filmmakers of the ’40s and ’50s could sell movies based on tawdry plots, then stretch toward levels of worldliness and sophistication that lighter movies couldn’t reach. Eventually, writers and directors were working to get that same sophistication without leaning so much on cheap thrills. In the Clifford Odets-scripted, Alexander Mackendrick-directed Sweet Smell Of Success (based on a novella by Ernest Lehman, a top screenwriter), Burt Lancaster stars as a tyrannical gossip columnist who makes publicist Tony Curtis miserable by capriciously deciding who should and shouldn’t be famous. The film is spectacularly shot and has individual scenes that pop, but it's driven more by its witty, acid-tongued dialogue than plot.

Updated 07/20/2010