The Criterion Collection

Sweet Smell of Success

Edition no. 555

MGM 2001 DVD (USA) The Criterion Collection 2011 DVD (USA) The Criterion Collection 2011 Blu-ray (USA) Arrow Academy 2015 Blu-ray (United Kingdom)
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  • Release Date: February 22 2011
  • Country of Release: USA
  • MSRP: $39.95
Buy Physical Copy At: Amazon.com Amazon.ca
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Licensor
MGM Home Entertainment
In the swift, cynical Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Alexander Mackendrick, Burt Lancaster stars as the vicious Broadway gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis as Sidney Falco, the unprincipled press agent Hunsecker ropes into smearing the up-and-coming jazz musician romancing his beloved sister. Featuring deliciously unsavory dialogue, in an acid, brilliantly structured script by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, and noirish neon cityscapes from Oscar-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe, Sweet Smell of Success is a cracklingly cruel dispatch from the kill-or-be-killed wilds of 1950s Manhattan.
  • Year: 1957
  • Time: 96 min.

Technical Specifications

Format: DVD
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Anamorphic)
Audio: English 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono
Resolution:
Subtitles: English
Region: 1
Discs: 2 Discs |  DVD-9

Supplements

  • New audio commentary featuring film scholar James Naremore
  • Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away, a 1986 documentary featuring interviews with director Alexander Mackendrick, actor Burt Lancaster, producer James Hill, and others
  • James Wong Howe: Cinematographer, a 1973 documentary about the Oscar-winning director of photography, featuring lighting tutorials with James Howe
  • New video interview with film critic and historian Neal Gabler (Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity) about legendary columnist Walter Winchell, inspiration for the character J. J. Hunsecker
  • New video interview with filmmaker James Mangold about Mackendrick, his instructor and mentor
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Gary Giddins, notes about the film and two short stories introducing its characters by screenwriter Ernest Lehman, and an excerpt about Clifford Odets from Mackendrick’s book On Film-making, introduced by the book’s editor, Paul Cronin

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Release Credits

Producer: Curtis Tsui
Artwork: Eric Skillman
Artwork: Sean Phillips

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