Sweet Smell of Success

J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) is one of the most powerful men in New York City - a newspaper gossip columnist presented as a thinly veiled caricature of the best known exposé journalist of that era, Walter Winchell. Malicious, controlling and accustomed to getting whatever he wants, right now Hunsecker wants to break up his young sister’s relationship with a jazz musician. Enter Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), a born hustler and ambitious press agent willing to do this dirty work in hopes of getting his clients plugs in Hunsecker's column.

What is now judged a brilliant and seminal film noir fizzled upon release. Sweet Smell of Success failed to live up to its title at the box office. Critics recoiled from its cynical, sordid depiction of a morally corrupt high-society underworld. The New York Times called it a story of “the most repulsive people.” The film is so raw and unapologetic, it can be painful to watch. The acid-tongued dialogue produced some of noir’s most memorable lines, including Hunsecker’s famous assessment of Sidney: “I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

So, what happened to change the public and critical assessment? We did. One generation rejected the film’s portrait of society as excessively bleak and cynical; later generations appreciated it as brutally perceptive.

Tony Curtis considered Sidney Falco the best performance of his career, yet both the actor and the film were completely shut out of the Academy Awards. Across the Pond, it was viewed from a different perspective: Curtis received a BAFTA (British Academy of Film & Television Arts) nomination for Best Foreign Actor.

More than half a century later, Sweet Smell of Success finally has the reputation that eluded it in 1957. Audiences are ready to embrace the darkness that once drove them away.