Stars: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Barbara Nichols
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars
Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre). Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.
We've now made it through over a dozen film noir movies in our series, and so you might be wondering what new things the genre can possibly say as we wind down the month, just three pictures left. By 1957, the genre and its trope had been utilized over-and-over again, and considering the box office of a movie like Sweet Smell of Success, audiences of the era were tired as well. Despite boasting two major stars of the 1950's (Curtis & Lancaster), the film was a box office flop at the time, with people hating the unusual dialogue and having Curtis play a scuzzball. Critical reception has been kinder, and Sweet Smell of Success now regularly shows up on "greatest films of all-time" lists, even being preserved by the National Film Registry. Why is this movie so revered after so many years of noir-what new things did it do that disgusted audiences but enthused critics?(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Sidney Falco (Curtis), a sleazy press agent who has a struggling business since he can't get his clients mentioned in JJ Hunsucker's (Lancaster, doing a sendup of Walter Winchell) column. Hunsucker makes him a deal that he'll be back in his good graces if he can get Hunsucker's kid sister Susan (Harrison) to breakup with her musician boyfriend Steve Dallas (Milner). Sidney eventually pits a fight between Susan and Steve, using a rival columnist to smear Steve, but in the process Steve insults Hunsucker and the columnist thus wants Steve destroyed even though Susan picked her brother over her lover. Sidney objects to Hunsucker's plan to get Steve arrested for marijuana possession, but Hunsucker offers to give Sidney unfettered access to his column (making Sidney rich) and he relents. He gets the marijuana planted on Steve, but in the process is set up by Susan, who for a while after attempting suicide lets her brother beat up Sidney (Hunsucker thinks that Sidney was trying to put the moves on Susan), before relenting and admitting that she's going to leave her brother behind forever, seeing what a man he is after Sidney tells him that Hunsucker was the one who tried to frame Steve. The movie ends with Hunsucker setting up Sidney for a fall, his corrupt cop arresting him, but the only person he ever cared about, Susan, walks out of his life forever.
The movie is mean, and deeply sordid. Curtis struggles with the role on occasion, his tendency to overact coming in full swing toward the second half of the film, but there are moments where he totally understands his character. You see just how morally bankrupt he is as Sidney during a scene with Barbara Nichols playing Rita, a cigarette girl who clearly has had some romantic inclinations with Curtis in the past. In order to get the rival columnist to plant the information about Steve, Sidney basically pimps out Rita without a second thought, blackmailing her into prostituting herself. It's a really uncomfortable scene, one that inarguably happened in real life but would be played for more care for Rita in a modern movie.
Rita's story is arguably the most tragic in a film that pits Hunsucker & Sidney against each other in a fight to the bottom, and is kind of why I didn't love the film, even though I definitely see its merits. After all, Rita is also a nice person, just one that doesn't have the money & connections of Susan, but we leave her without any sense of reprieve in the arms of a man that's basically going to force her to have sex with him so that she might get money to pay for her kid's military school. The redemption arc for Sidney doesn't work for me, and thus throws the entire back half of the film off, because he doesn't ever save her from his own doing. Yes, it's admirable that he eventually wants to stop JJ, but he's so far down at that point that there's no saving him morally for me, and that the film tries doesn't sit well.
The movie's best asset is Lancaster as JJ Hunsucker, giving the finest performance I've seen from him (between this and The Killers earlier this month, I might have to stop saying "I'm not really a fan of Burt Lancaster" though as I Walk Alone also proved this month, I'm not unabashedly enamored with his work). JJ Hunsucker is a truly diabolical creation, and the kind that a decade earlier in film noir would have been thrown in jail or killed before the end of the film. That it's 1957 and we can have an ending where his only punishment is losing his sister (not his life or his power) is a sign of where film noir would have to go, where villains are allowed to win. The movie also doesn't shy away from the clear incestuous obsession that Hunsucker has for Susan, showing that while he may never have her, he doesn't want any other man to, and his lack of a romantic interest in anyone else (or any interest at all to anyone who isn't Susan) is enough of a wink to understand what's bubbling under the surface of this film. Lancaster saves the picture, and is why critics loved this so much, but I also understand why audiences didn't love this initially either. The movie has sharp dialogue and some occasional strong acting, but it's messy & takes too many turns with its plotting for my taste.
Previous Films in the Series: The Killing, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, Gun Crazy, Night and the City, In a Lonely Place, They Live By Night, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Killers, The Woman in the Window, The Big Sleep
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