555 Sweet Smell of Success

[Sloper]

I just want to drop in to mildly suggest that, in addition to the great writing, acting and photography, this film owes a huge amount to Elmer Bernstein's score, which maintains the tension and pacing of the narrative at times when it might otherwise have flagged a bit. The wheezy, sleazy main theme in particular is so wonderfully evocative of the slimy, dirty town Falco and Hunsecker subsist in. It's like a striptease theme that Falco dances anxiously to all through the film, hopping from one foot to the other as he quickly whores himself out beyond all human recognition. I don't know of a finer or more sympathetic (or more tragic) portrayal of weaselly desperation on film than Curtis's here, and the music is a perfect complement. I used to have a cassette with scenes from this film recorded on it, which I listened to obsessively while ignoring my homework. This film, along with a handful of others, was responsible for making me fall in love with black and white, and jazz, and Burt Lancaster - so many things.

And yes, incest, definitely. I know this sounds pretentious, but Sweet Smell of Success is a modern re-telling of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi - there are just too many similarities for this to be a coincidence, and the film even shares the play's gallows humour, and general air of wry detachment from the horrors on display. In Webster, the incest theme is still veiled, but without it the brother's fury and jealousy don't make much sense.

I remember Jeanne Moreau telling that 'I made her swallow' story about Lancaster; she went on to comment, 'Horrible - horrible man!' Oh well...

[Mr Sausage]

....there are just too many similarities for this to be a coincidence...

Don't be such a tease. Let's hear 'em.

[Sloper]

Okay then, once more with detail… There are lots of SPOILERS about both play and film here, obviously.

The Duchess of Malfi is a widow with two brothers: they more or less order her never to marry again, one of them (Duke Ferdinand) in much more adamant and sexualised terms than the other (the Cardinal). However, the duchess secretly marries Antonio, the master of her household, a man of much lower social standing than herself. Much later, after the duchess’ death, Ferdinand claims that he had opposed her re-marriage in the hope of inheriting her fortune, and because the ‘meanness’ of her match with Antonio dishonoured their family, but as he then says, “What was the meanness of her match to me?” The duchess herself is at a loss to understand why her marriage has so upset Ferdinand, and even the Cardinal, though furious with his sister, is horrified by his brother’s disproportionate anger, which again is expressed in highly sexualised terms. For instance, the duke imagines burning his sister and her husband to death in their bed-sheets, and later tells her, “thou hast ta’en that massy sheet of lead that hid thy husband’s bones, and folded it about my heart”, metaphorically replacing her dead husband with his own heart. In short, he behaves more like a cuckolded husband than a dishonoured brother.

This seems to me very similar to what is going on in Sweet Smell of Success: Hunsecker, of course, does not stand to make any material gains by keeping Susie unmarried, but he does seem to object to the unworthy match she is making with this impoverished guitar player (who, incidentally, is every bit as ineffectual and pathetic as Antonio in the play). And just like Ferdinand, his preoccupation with breaking up the romance seems totally out of proportion given his ostensible reasons for objecting to it. "Don’t ever tell anyone, dear, how I’m tied to your apron strings" is a very creepy line, especially when you look at Susie’s thoroughly creeped-out reaction: partly she’s becoming aware of her brother’s duplicity – she knows he’s only getting Dallas his job back in order to do something even more awful to him further down the line – but it feels like something even more sinister might be dawning on her in that moment. And maybe this is part of what drives her to suicide when she is trapped in Hunsecker's apartment. (Susie's final walk into the sunshine might also be compared to the duchess' presumed ascent into heaven when she dies; the juxtaposition with Sidney, in the shadows, being bundled into a dark car, certainly evokes a kind of salvation/damnation dynamic, with Kello and co. as the devils carrying Falco to punishment - not my favourite moment of the film, I have to say, but it's nicely done).

The really interesting parallel, though, is between Bosola and Sidney Falco. Bosola is a malcontent with a criminal record, first seen badgering the Cardinal because he can’t get him on the phone anymore:

Bosola: I do haunt you still.
Cardinal: So.
Bosola: I have done you better service than to be slighted thus.
Cardinal: You enforce your merit too much.

And so on – very much like the initial exchanges we see between Falco and Hunsecker. Shortly afterwards, because the Cardinal doesn't want to get his hands dirty, Ferdinand himself employs Bosola, ostensibly as the duchess’ servant, but in fact to spy on her in case she has a boyfriend (by the way, Tony Curtis' mocking pronunciation of this word is maybe my favourite moment of the film). At first Bosola refuses the duke’s offers of money, but succumbs when given honourable employment: “What’s my place?” he says. “The provisorship o’ th’ horse? Say, then, my corruption grew out of horse dung. I am your creature.” This is heavily reminiscent of the scene in which Hunsecker persuades Falco to “get Harry Kello” (to beat up Dallas) by putting him in charge of the column – newspapers being the fertile horse dung out of which the corruption grows in this film (see that pile of newspapers hitting the ground at the end of the title sequence, and Falco plucking one out to check if he’s in there).

Bosola is like Falco in many ways, more conscious of the difference between right and wrong than his master, but too desperate for advancement to listen to his conscience. He has a similar relationship with Antonio as Falco has with Steve Dallas (suspicious and antagonistic) but also a similar relationship with the duchess as Falco has with Susie. Both characters feel sorry for the woman they’re helping to destroy, and both try (rather weakly) to defend the evil brother(s): “Your brothers mean you safety and pity”, says Bosola, to which the duchess responds, “With such a pity men preserve alive pheasants and quails, when they are not fat enough to be eaten.” Falco tells Susie to confide in her brother: “You’ll find him a real friend.” She is similarly unconvinced.

After the duchess has been separated from her husband, Bosola asks Ferdinand, “Why do you do this?” and begs him to “end here”, just as Falco begs Hunsecker to lay off Dallas after breaking up the romance. When Bosola has had the duchess killed, as per Ferdinand’s instructions, the latter hates him for it, and tells him his only reward will be a pardon for the crime of having killed his sister. This is similar to the moment at the end of Sweet Smell when Hunsecker pretends not to know anything about the assault on Dallas, and menaces Sidney: “And is that why you put your hands on my sister?” And then, in both play and film, the worm turns. We never see Falco actually sticking the boot in, but the line “That fat cop can break my bones – he’ll never stop me from telling what I know” suggests that he will find a way to hurt J.J. later on; Bosola is more successful, slaughtering both Ferdinand and the Cardinal in the final scene (although he does also kill Antonio by accident).

I also wonder whether there’s a little of Harry Kello in the executioner who strangles the duchess’ maid: she struggles by various means to elicit some pity from him, saying at one point that she cannot die because she is “contracted to a young gentleman.” The executioner holds up the noose and says, “Here’s your wedding ring.” I always imagine this line being read in an Emile Meyer drawl.

I have no idea whether Clifford Odets or Ernest Lehman were consciously thinking of Webster, but the parallels are certainly there. It seems very plausible to me that this self-important, overheated '50s melodrama (and I say that with no disrespect - overheated can be very tasty) would be modelled on a Jacobean revenge tragedy. In any case, it would be interesting to compare the two works' treatment of the themes they have in common, possessive family relationships and a culture of grasping, underhand sleaze being the two most obvious ones.

[HerrSchreck]

Since I haven't read Malfi I can't comment at all on your comparison, Sloper, between the two works, though it sounds like there may be some compelling echoes between them. But I did want to comment on a line or two in your well thought-out analysis. The first was this:

but he does seem to object to the unworthy match she is making with this impoverished guitar player (who, incidentally, is every bit as ineffectual and pathetic as Antonio in the play).

I'm not sure from whose POV Dallas' unworthiness manifests... perhaps Hunsecker may see him as unworthy, but then again I'm sure he'd see anybody as unworthy. I don't see him, from the omniscient, audience POV as unworthy... in fact Falco even comments on his nature "that boy is dumb on matinee days only," and of course his integrity is genuine-- this is the thing that sticks most in the craw of Hunsecker.

I also don't think we're supposed to see him as impoverished. His band is garnering obvious press and general public attention, whereby even a blind item in a gossip column requires very little imagination for the public to put two and two together and realize it's Dallas that's being discussed. That's a man whose made somewhat of a name for himself. Falco remarks to his uncle who manages him "Yeah and with 15% of his future you're beautiful too," or something along those lines. The band and Dallas are real up and comers and a genuine sensation in the jazz world... and rather than unworthy, ineffectual and pathetic, I think we are meant to see Dallas as spiritually substantial, posessed of a genuineness that drives Hunsecker batty, and written to be perceived by the audience as the only Real Man among the trio of Hunsecker, Falco, and Dallas. Among other things, Sweet Smell is about the putrid reek that men like Hunsecker and Falco carry about them, about the abuses that such hollow men are capable of affecting right in the face of quietly dignified souls like Dallas, who have very little recourse aside from maintaining their dignity and avoiding the moral plunge of the prostrate subservience on the gangplank-walk that a Falco must endeavor upon to stay out of Hunsecker's gunsights... which, as we see, is no insurance at all.

Rather than pathetic, ineffectual, unworthy, etc, Dallas is rather the single good guy with an uncorrupted moral compass within the show business orbit of characters (not counting the minor characters, i e Sam Levene's) who come into the Hunsecker realm.

Also, I never was clear that the goal at the end was

to “get Harry Kello” (to beat up Dallas)

I thought the primary goal was to plant the drugs (in the pack of cigs Falco slips into Dallas' jacket at the door of the club)... Kello's involvement was to search him on suspicion of posession of reefer, owing to the Ellwell column putting him under unjustifiec law-enforcement attention. I always thought the hospitalization/fight was a result of Dallas flipping his lid during the search-discovery of the planted weed, and the "arrest" saw Steve finally lose it, unable to keep his cool anymore without having somebody to take a swing at. I can't say for sure, but I thought Kello's involvement was to make an arrest, not specifically conduct an assault on Dallas, at least not as the goal. JJ was looking to remove Dallas as a threat and an irritant-- getting him thrown in jail would accomplish this in spades.

An abrasive, brilliantly executed groan from the gut from men allergic to the unavoidable interludes of obligatory shitswallowing endemic in their own business--show-business-- the script of Sweet Smell is obviously a rarity not only for it's time but for any time. Even when it cushions the blows of some of the really shitty things that Falco perversely pulls off in the script in his scheming to execute his and JJ's ends, it's brilliantly done. The finest example I can think of this edge-softening is when Falco gets his blind item planted in Otis Ellwell's column by pushing and shoving the desperate-to-keep-her-job Rita into the sack with the rumpled Ellwell. Rather than upset the audience by seeing her forced kicking and screaming into a sexual favor with this oily old horndog columnist, we learn, after she finally acquiesces and Falco leaves, that the two of them had already had an assignation in the past, down in Florida, which Rita is too ashamed to admit to Falco. It's a brilliant touch, a perfect way out of a scene that would really have stuck in some audience member's craw: cleverly executed, funny, and done in a way that rhymes with the blackhearted nature of the humor running beneath the proceedings. Even Rita, we discover, after all her puritanical kicking & screaming, has her own icky secrets and asks Ellwell "Don't tell Sidney" because she doesn't want him to know she's a touch full of shit just like everyone else.

[Sloper]

Schreck, you're right: 'impoverished' is the wrong word, but I always did get the sense that the 'guitar player' status had something to do with Hunsecker's dislike of Dallas. The fact that he was going places wouldn't mean very much to J.J. - a musician has no influence, or power, or success of the kind that Hunsecker would regard as qualifying a man to be with his sister. For the moment, at least, Dallas is a relatively poor up-and-comer, and when he says things to Susie like 'This fur coat is your brother - I've always hated this coat', there seems to be an implication that he's always felt intimidated by (as well as contemptuous of) the wealthier circles Susie is connected to; that this gap in ‘status’ between them is what is now driving them apart. And in that sense I think it’s a similar situation to the one in Webster’s play. But yes, by any rational standards Steve is a good catch, and like Antonio he has more substance and moral fibre than the other men – and this makes the brother’s fury all the harder to interpret except in terms of jealousy.

And yes, I think the primary goal is to frame Dallas for drug possession and put him in jail, but I think the assault is also a part of J.J.’s plan. It’s a while since I saw the film and I no longer have a copy of it, but my memory is that all we see of the arrest is Dallas being cornered in a dark underpass, the beginning of the fight, and then the frantic drum solo in the jazz club. Earlier it’s heavily implied that Kello is the kind of cop who would rough up a suspect whether they fought back or not: he obviously has a history of violence (“I didn’t mean to hit the boy so hard”), and as is the way of these things it seems that J.J. got him off the hook for that crime because he wanted him to do it again – under his direction. So when J.J. hands Falco the note saying “Get Kello”, and adds, “I want that boy taken apart”, I always felt there was an additional implication of physical violence there – as well as the drugs thing. Certainly Kello beats Sidney at the end without him seeming to put up any resistance, though of course there are personal reasons for that as well.

As for Dallas’ integrity – if I seem rather down on him that’s because I am, and this is a totally personal thing. He seems to me simply and boringly good. The few bad lines in the script mostly belong to him – the “fur coat” one I mentioned above, also “those ‘dears’ sound like daggers” – and although that line he throws at Falco, something like “If you want information don’t scratch for it like a dog; just ask for it, like a man” is technically not a bad line, it makes me cringe. The characterisation of Dallas is so earnest, and so self-righteous, and Martin Milner is such an all-American boy wonder… And Susan is just as much of a bore, with her little chipmunk face and that simpering, whining little way she has of pronouncing the word ‘Steve’. I think your reading is totally faithful to what the writers seem to have intended: we’re meant to root for Dallas and Susie, and despise Falco and Hunsecker (and the rest of their kind) for trying to drag them down. But personally, I’d be delighted to see those two lovey-dovey beacons of sweetness and light fall down a manhole. Partly this annoyance comes from having watched the film too many times back in the day – this used to be one of those films (like Sunset Boulevard or The Killing) that I could always pull out to show to a friend who wasn’t generally interested in old movies, because I think pretty much anyone could find something to enjoy here. I saw it again and again in quick succession, the young couple grated on my nerves more and more every time, and when I realised how similar the story was to Malfi, I also gained a clearer sense of why I disliked these two characters so much.

One of the things I love about Webster’s play is that Antonio, though a ‘good guy’, also has a darker side, which reveals itself very subtly in his resentment of the duchess’ power over him (she practically entraps him into marrying her), and his almost comic awareness throughout the play of just how little power he has to alter his horrifying predicament. There’s something of the brooding Hamlet in him, but without any real “motive and cue for action”. He has almost nothing to do in the play, but Webster’s wry characterisation of him, and the fact that he is never made out to be any kind of martyr (which I think Dallas and Susan kind of are), and his undignified end, combine to make him a fascinating character. I’ve never seen the play performed, but it would take a really sensitive, complex actor to make this part work. The duchess, in a sense, does come across as a bit of a martyr when she is strangled, but she’s earned it, and again there are several hints at a less saintly layer to her personality: her (understandable) duplicity towards her brothers, and her aforementioned manipulation of Antonio. And, very much unlike Susan Hunsecker, the duchess has colossal balls.

The big flaw in Sweet Smell, I think, is that we’re meant to pity Susan but the script makes no real attempt to elicit our respect for her (despite Sidney’s sarcastic compliment to her at the end, and her walking out on her brother, which seems like too little, too late); and that we’re meant to respect Dallas’ strength and integrity, but he inevitably comes across as weaker, less clever, and less witty than the characters we spend the most time with, and with whom (at least in my case) our real sympathies lie. I know I’ll sound like a massive dick for telling writers like Lehman and Odets how to do their jobs, but I think a dynamic like Webster’s would have worked better.

The best moment for Dallas’ character is when he comes up against Hunsecker and is reduced to admitting that this great man is too quick and clever for him. In my experience, this is what it’s really like when you’re facing a smooth-tongued bastard like that: you just can’t say anything, or anything you do say digs you deeper into the hole. Dallas’ contributions to the snappy dialogue - I’ve mentioned some but the “dog and cat heaven” joke is another example – just don’t work the way they do in the mouths of the other characters, and I think he would have been a much more effective and sympathetic, even tragic, character if he had been quieter, more resigned, really a man apart from the wise-cracking eels around him - and if Susan had been the one with the sharp tongue, if she’d stood up for herself, and for Steve, a bit more. In a way, the portrayal of this young couple makes commercial sense insofar as it gives us some uncomplicatedly nice people to latch onto in an otherwise deeply sour film (which I gather didn't make a lot of money anyway), but dramatically I find them a failure. As you seem (correct me if I’m wrong) to be suggesting, Schreck, Steve Dallas is a kind of indirect mouthpiece for the authors, standing up for the ‘artist with integrity’ against the forces of corruption that stifle him. But these mouthpiece-characters never really work for me, especially when they’re as self-congratulatory as this. I may well be in a minority, as usual, on this subject...but for what it's worth, that's my take on it.

Oh, and yes that “don’t tell Sidney” scene is one of the best. I love the bit just beforehand where Rita protests to Sidney that she doesn’t know this man, and without missing a beat he responds, “So take five minutes. Get acquainted.” Tony Curtis’ enunciation of those last two words evokes so brilliantly the character’s talent for dressing up prostitution as networking. She (and maybe Sam Levene and Falco's secretary, actually; the latter has a great moment when she answers the phone to Sidney and quietly realises he's just scamming someone, Harvey Temple I think, and she just lowers the phone again with this tragically resigned look on her face) are examples of characters who are basically good, and therefore slightly set apart from Falco, but also hard-bitten and compromised enough to be believable, and therefore sympathetic. Rita's confession tells us so much about her, adds so much depth to her character, as well as being a very funny and dramatically effective ending to the scene - and, as you say, leavening our contempt for Sidney Falco.

[HerrSchreck]

As for Dallas’ integrity – if I seem rather down on him that’s because I am, and this is a totally personal thing. He seems to me simply and boringly good. The few bad lines in the script mostly belong to him – the “fur coat” one I mentioned above, also “those ‘dears’ sound like daggers” – and although that line he throws at Falco, something like “If you want information don’t scratch for it like a dog; just ask for it, like a man” is technically not a bad line, it makes me cringe. The characterisation of Dallas is so earnest, and so self-righteous, and Martin Milner is such an all-American boy wonder… And Susan is just as much of a bore, with her little chipmunk face and that simpering, whining little way she has of pronouncing the word ‘Steve’. I think your reading is totally faithful to what the writers seem to have intended: we’re meant to root for Dallas and Susie, and despise Falco and Hunsecker (and the rest of their kind) for trying to drag them down. But personally, I’d be delighted to see those two lovey-dovey beacons of sweetness and light fall down a manhole. Partly this annoyance comes from

Well, Steve's affliction of cine-blah places him firmly in the long line of casting curses going back to the beginning of cinema, felt especially powerfully in stuff like Universal horror films where good and bad guys are delineated in powerful black and white terms... a delineation which is equally set forth in Sweet Smell: the worst part in these films is always playing the handsome, day-saving good guy who all the women run to. It's a part-curse that's personified in David Manners in Dracula and The Mummy. John Boles in Frankenstein also epitomizes this *yawn* cultivated in the audience for the good guy. Part of this stems from the fact that, onscreen, nothing is more snooze-inducing than a Nice Guy With No Problems Whatsoever-- there's nothing to watch, no reason to pay attention. It's the reason that newspapers are filled with nothing but bad news and villains. Good news is no news, it often seems.

But I agree about Milner... until I saw him in William Castle's 13 Ghosts, I was sure (because he was so bland) he was an actual guitar player who played with Chico Hamilton and was cast because a) he could act a little bit, b) he could truly play guitar (i e he was actually in the band... as a guitar player myself it looks to me like he's actually playing the songs during the music interludes in the film), and, most importantly, c) his All-American Good Guy looks.

I'm not so sure we're supposed to be so strongly identifying and emphatically "rooting" for Steve and Susie, as we are supposed to be getting the overall message about the distateful nature of the behind the scenes machinations the public are not privvy to viz men they glorify like a Winchell/Hunsecker. Like any horror film (and this film in a sense is one), Sweet Smell elevates it's villains via extreme cinematic color, so that in the scenes where they're not present the film hits a lull until they return. We 'like' Falco and Hunsecker because we love it when they're on screen saying stuff like "pick me a good one" to the hat check girl, or "I love this dirty town," etc, and the "good guys" can't compete in their absence-- and in a sense this glib and quick verbal sparring and charisma explains their occupation of lofty social/professional position-- they're legitimate magnetic personalities completely capable of outfighting anybody in the social ring. It's almost like there's an afterecho of the film that states "goodness is boring, and goodness and boredom are high crimes in the high stakes world of big bucks entertainment." It's a cautionary tale warning the public against excessive adulation of those who've scaled the hieghts of entertainment, of the rottenness that such power can cultivate, and it's also a cautionary tale addressed to men of power themselves-- warning them against mistaking the mindless tooting of Yes-Men for genuine reality, against believing in the impression they may foster in their minds of their own seeming omnipotence. It eventually will lead to some interlude or other of going too far, causing it all to come falling down, as it does for Falco, and to a certain degree Hunsecker himself.. who has lost the one thing that means anything to him in the end.

[criterionsnob]

Beaver

[jsteffe]

Beaver

Looks sweet! I need to pick this one up. Actually, the old MGM DVD comes off looking fairly decent, apart from some minor cropping and not being anamorphic. It looks as if they took good care with the original transfer.

[cdnchris]

Blu-ray

[Murdoch]

Gorgeous, can't wait for mine to arrive.

[stwrt]

Mine should arrive soon (please). I've been having a 1950s black and white movie kick recently with The Set-Up, Gun Crazy (both on DVD) and Blu-Ray discs of Night of the Hunter and All About Eve. Eve has a particularly good transfer to HD and those threads of clothing cdnchris mentions as a high-light on the Sweet Smell disc look spectacular on Fox's Eve Blu-Ray, almost unhealthily intoxicating.

[Jeff]

Is it too early to place my vote for release of the year? This is just an amazing package for an amazing film. The Blu-ray transfer is a gorgeous new 4K scan of the original negative. I've only had a chance to listen to part of James Naremore's commentary track, but it's clearly one of the best ones to come down the pike in quite a while. I've yet to watch the video supplements. The thick booklet looks incredible, and the packaging itself is a thing of beauty, with its gorgeous artwork and a sturdy slipcase on the digipak that's a heavier weight than usual. As they did last year with The Night of the Hunter, Criterion has made up for years of living with a lackluster MGM disc by giving us an American masterpiece in the definitive, high-profile release that it richly deserves.

[knives]

The book was a pleasant surprise(I've only read the first essay)and at least makes up for that hideous yellow.

[mfunk9786]

I came in to compliment the booklet as well - it's a shame the same effort isn't put into contemporary films' booklets. And the design of it is gorgeous, I keep checking my fingertips for ink smudges!

[aox]

Yeah, I know this is only February, but this is the release of the year. The picture is crystal clear.

[matrixschmatrix]

I went through all everything on the disc yesterday, and while everything was worthwhile I was really impressed by the features on Winchell and James Wong Howe- the former for giving a fuller and better portrait of the actually fairly complicated historical figure, and his biographer's views on how the Lancaster version would not have functioned as well (not that that's any meaningful criticism of the movie, but it is interesting) and the latter for the practical demonstration of lighting and just broadly for getting twenty minutes in which to hang around with an engaging figure.

This is a movie I hadn't seen before, and of course I fell in love with the film itself, but I think I'm in love with it twice over after watching all the supplements.

[antnield]

The Digital Fix

[stwrt]

The Digital Fix

That reviewer has a horribly clunky prose style, it's as though English is not his first language. "As Falco continually devolves into a monstrous puppet..."

[knives]

Typo alert: second paragraph of the first essay suggests that Falco is flying too close to the hun and burning up as a result.

[matrixschmatrix]

Is Lancaster German?

[skuhn8]

Is Lancaster German?

More of a sympathizer I reckon

[jorencain]

Typo alert: second paragraph of the first essay suggests that Falco is flying too close to the hun and burning up as a result.

I thought that was a "clever" reference to the character of Hunsecker.

[cdnchris]

Typo alert: second paragraph of the first essay suggests that Falco is flying too close to the hun and burning up as a result.

I thought that was a "clever" reference to the character of Hunsecker.

That's actually what I took it for as well.

[Frances]

Can anyone tell me if the DVD is a digipak too? I know the blu-ray is. Thanks in advance!

[Askew]

The DVD does indeed come in a digipak.