![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/6c/1d/00231d6c_medium.jpeg)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/6c/1d/00231d6c.jpeg)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]
2xDVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | 01:36:34 | 6,32 Gb + 6,57 Gb
Audio: English AC3 1.0 @ 384 Kbps | Subtitles: English SDH
Genre: Drama, Film-Noir
2xDVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | 01:36:34 | 6,32 Gb + 6,57 Gb
Audio: English AC3 1.0 @ 384 Kbps | Subtitles: English SDH
Genre: Drama, Film-Noir
In the swift, cynical Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Alexander Mackendrick, Burt Lancaster stars as the vicious Broadway gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis as Sidney Falco, the unprincipled press agent Hunsecker ropes into smearing the up-and-coming jazz musician romancing his beloved sister. Featuring deliciously unsavory dialogue, in an acid, brilliantly structured script by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, and noirish neon cityscapes from Oscar-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe, Sweet Smell of Success is a cracklingly cruel dispatch from the kill-or-be-killed wilds of 1950s Manhattan.
IMDB
Criterion
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b6/1d/00231db6_medium.jpeg)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b6/1d/00231db6.jpeg)
Like fresh dough being carefully twisted into a deformed pretzel, the manipulative lead characters in Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success were born without a spine. Contorting words, loyalties, perspectives, and truths is second nature for a high-powered New York City columnist, J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), and his publicist lackey, Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), their collective scheming and backstabbing representing just a small pocket of moral rot eating away the glitzy Manhattan mise-en-scène. These men inhabit the back corners of dive bars, the nooks offstage at Broadway plays, and the corner stools on the fringes of jazz joints, always looking for different ways to spew the poisonous gossip to insure their economic and social survival. Each machine gun-like conversation is a façade, each broken promise a Malakoff cocktail, often merging together to form negotiations ripe with passive-aggressive assaults on true love and commitment. In this world of real vice and fake virtue, nothing is sacred and everything is game.![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b7/1d/00231db7_medium.jpeg)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]]()
There are no heroes in Sweet Smell of Success, just victimizers and victims. Often, key characters inhabit both roles simultaneously, with the sleek and sly Sidney fitting this mold perfectly. Mackendrick introduces Sidney as a jumbled ball of nerves, under the iron thumb of J.J. for not successfully breaking up a romance between Hunsecker's younger sister, Susan (Susan Harrison), and her musician boyfriend, Steve (Martin Milner), but also an effective dictator over those lost souls beneath him on the food chain. Sidney's even willing to whore out a friend or two to get what he wants. Early on, after receiving a phone call from an angry client, Sidney tells his secretary, "Watch me run a 50-yard dash with my legs cut off," then immediately insults her for genuinely caring about his fledgling career. One second Sidney's a sweet talker, the next he's gutting your character from the inside out, and it's this type of back and forth that makes Sweet Smell of Success so enthralling.![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b8/1d/00231db8_medium.jpeg)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]]()
When Mackendrick finally introduces J.J. in person (we've already seen his pervasive picture in newspaper ads all over the city), nothing can prepare us for his cold-stone samurai presence and razorblade tongue. "You're dead, so get yourself buried," he says to Sydney, living up to his reputation as a crusher of dreams. Based on the infamous Walter Winchell, J.J. lobs verbal grenades at friends and foes alike, deflating egos and confidence with a few choice words and a strong glance. He commands attention and abhors insubordination, something Sidney learns far too well throughout the film. Together, they advance on Susan and Steve with a multitude of brutal tactics, everything from character assassination (accusations of communism, drug use) to entrapment and evidence tampering, forcing the innocent couple into a quagmire of emotional uncertainty.![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b9/1d/00231db9_medium.jpeg)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]]()
Over the course of Sweet Smell of Success's trim 96-minute running time, Mackendrick paints New York City in brash visual strokes, mashing together flashing lights, honking horns, and sweeping bodies to jam-pack the possibilities of movement and detail. This bustling aesthetic appears immediately, with James Wong Howe's sterling black-and-white cinematography playing over the opening credits, a visual fabric woven together with long tracking shots swimming across busy streets, up flashing marquees, and down the depths of alleyways. The camera can't help but slither outside in the cold, but the visuals take on a balmy thousand-yard stare during interiors, planting next to characters in static shots as they berate each other to a bloody pulp.![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/ba/1d/00231dba_medium.jpeg)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]]()
There's also an intriguing emphasis on moral ambiguity as a valid belief system, something comparative to a devout form of religion. The indoctrination process is produced by years of failure and compromise, experiences that develop a callus against hard work ethics and fair play. This is best on display when Sidney tries to peak at an advance copy of J.J.'s influential Broadway column, Hunsecker's secretary saying, "You haven't got a drop of respect in you for anything alive. You're immersed in the theology of making a fast buck." Sidney squirms, then laughs it off, at peace with his own unrelenting seediness. Even more disturbing is that J.J. and Sidney truly believe their wonky methodologies are the best way to obtain freedom of expression and economic stability. In the end, they both are cut by the piercing power of that double-edged sword.![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/bb/1d/00231dbb_medium.jpeg)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]]()
The almost elemental focus on poisoning people's minds and manipulating their bodies wraps Sweet Smell of Success in a putrid scent that sputters the film's moral compass out of control. When Sidney screams to the rafters, "I'm toasting my favorite new perfume: Success," the smoky interior of the bar reeks from the fallen bodies he's trampled over to get to the top. And even though Susan and Steve (portrayed as strong but simple innocents) deny these manipulators their day of victory, there's still a distinct stench rising from the quiet street as the end credits roll over the New York skyline. In this final moment of deafening solitude, Sweet Smell of Success becomes a brilliant foreshadowing to the abuse of information and perspective in the Internet age, a virtuosic, damning, and above all else, intoxicating portrait of American power lust. This is the original Social Network.
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b7/1d/00231db7.jpeg)
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b8/1d/00231db8.jpeg)
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b9/1d/00231db9.jpeg)
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/ba/1d/00231dba.jpeg)
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/bb/1d/00231dbb.jpeg)
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/bc/1d/00231dbc_medium.jpeg)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]
![Sweet Smell of Success (1957) [The Criterion Collection #555]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/bc/1d/00231dbc.jpeg)
Special Features:
- Exclusive new digital restoration from the original 35 mm camera negative
- New audio commentary featuring film scholar James Naremore
- Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away, a 1986 documentary featuring interviews with director Alexander Mackendrick, actor Burt Lancaster, producer James Hill, and others
- James Wong Howe: Cinematographer, a 1973 documentary about the Oscar-winning director of photography, featuring lighting tutorials with Howe
- New video interview with film critic and historian Neal Gabler (Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity) about legendary columnist Walter Winchell, inspiration for the character J. J. Hunsecker
- New video interview with filmmaker James Mangold about Mackendrick, his instructor and mentor
- Original theatrical trailer
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