A Film Canon

Sweet Smell Of Success presents the gossip columnist as an extension of Cold War surveillance, and the Communist witch-hunt as an extended piece of mass entertainment, deflecting the family values that supposedly informed it into the incestual-homosocial proximity of megalomaniacal journalist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), all of whom find themselves thrown together over a single, sweltering night in Manhattan's most exclusive nightlife district. Shot largely on location, this lurid, jazzy neonscape repels any kind of meaningful immersion, as James Wong Howe's fluid cinematography allows both Falco and the audience to slick across its surface, as well as translating the pervasive threat of a 'smear' into the ever-increasing, slightly tipsy trail of dodging and dodged bodies, always one step behind Clifford Odets' blustery, fast-talking dialogue ("Why is it that everything you say sounds like a threat?"), and recalling the sublime choreography of Mackendrick's Ealing features, as does the cool detachment that the lack of any sympathetic anchor engenders.