Who doesn’t love some juicy gossip? For as long as we’ve had famous people, we’ve had other, lesser people starting some shit about them. Nonetheless, and rather inexplicably, the jury’s still out on whether that’s a good thing or not. Mostly you’d think we’d condemn the rumor mill for appealing to our basic bitch jealousy and false sense of superiority, but what about the ever-important gossip whispers that have snowballed into the social outcries that exposed and kinda, a little bit brought down evil men like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein? In the era of #MeToo and Instagram followers and Yelp ratings and Uber ratings and Letterboxd ratings, maybe we’re actually living through peak gossip right now? Or maybe it was the late 1950s, when Sweet Smell of Success came out?
Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is a shitty little publicist on a five-day losing streak trying to get his clients featured in J.J. Hunsecker’s (Burt Lancaster) immensely popular column. We come to find out that’s because Hunsecker, a real arrogant asshole, doesn’t actually care about what Sidney brings him and wants Sidney to do him a huge favor before getting any preferential treatment: break up Hunsecker’s sister, Susan’s (Susan Harrison), engagement to up-and-coming jazz guitarist Steve Dallas (Marty Milner). This feels extra creepy because there’s no mention of the Hunsecker parents and J.J. and Susan live together and J.J. is like 50 and Susan is 19. How did this happen?
Already knee-deep in promises Sidney will have no way of keeping, the desperate fool spends the rest of his night laying a trap. After making some people do some surprisingly nasty stuff for a movie older than my dad, Sidney and Hunsecker’s fucked up scheme moves into its next stage the following morning. It becomes clear that you really can judge a book by its cover, as the more time we spend with Hunsecker, the more he reveals himself to be the cocky prick who thinks the world revolves around him that I just assumed he was on first mention. And Sidney, he’s just a ruthless fool trying to get a whiff of that sweet smell of success.
This is the second incredibly snappy movie about degenerate members of the press I watched this week, and I think the one I prefer. Unlike His Girl Friday, which was based on a play, Sweet Smell of Success is adapted from a novelette that was published where else but in Cosmopolitan magazine. That freed up the movie to use a bunch of different locations, and one of the great pleasures of watching this is how it presents New York City’s jazz club scene as the shadowy underbelly of the world. They had the idea to shoot on location in New York’s busiest locations at their busiest times and it just rules. It’s just so gritty and heartless, sort of like Gotham City in the better Batman movies (apologies to Joel Schumacher’s gothic circus).
But the best quality of Sweet Smell of Success is its endless barrage of devastating zingers. Not even James Bond could survive down here! Every character in this movie is fully prepared to ruin the life of everyone they meet with both their actions and their words. Even Steve Dallas, who is meant to be sort of a paragon of righteousness, is not above throwing devastating verbal haymakers. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis risked alienating fans playing such diabolic douchebags, but at least it looks like they loved playing the bad guys. Sadly the bet didn’t pay off for anybody, as Sweet Smell of Success flopped at the box office and didn’t even bring in awards nominations for this stellar cast and crew. Thankfully, it’s reputation has grown in the decades since release, and now Sweet Smell of Success is considered one of the best New York movies… just a scary New York I don’t want anything to do with.