Id hate to take a bite out of you... youre a cookie full of arsenic. Along with some of Billy Wilders best films, Alexander Mackendricks THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957) is one of my favorite films for dialogue. Burt Lancaster gives one of his best performance as acerbic gossip columnist J.J. Hudsecker and Tony Curtis is excellent as the ambitious publicist who is trying to get back into his good graces and loses whats left of his integrity in doing so. This is a dark, bleak portrait of greed and corruption and it doesnt pull any punches - but the dark humor helps to make it palatable and entertaining. I hadnt seen this in years, so it was real treat revisiting it on Criterions sparkling Blu-ray. I enjoyed the documentary on Alexander Mackendrick and the piece on Walter Winchell, the columnist who inspired the character of Hudsecker (and hated the film accordingly!), and I look forward to delving into the rest of the extras tomorrow...
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 04:02:56 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015