"A lustrous new 35mm print! A word to the wise:
If you love this dirty town... hop a cab to 209 West Houston Street!"
-- AO Scott, New York Times

“Extraordinary for its depiction of a now-vanished New York, for the spiraling viciousness of Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis and for the plot, which hinges on a smear campaign.”
-- Stuart Klawans, The New York Times (2001).

“Caustically brilliant! James Wong Howe's black-and-white cinematography is among the best in the film-noir genre, and the performances of Lancaster and Curtis - both playing against type - rank among their greatest.”
-- Jack Mathews, Daily News

“I’d hate to take a bite out of you, Sidney. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

(1957, Alexander Mackendrick) "Match me, Sidney," barks Walter Winchellesque gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker (a bespectacled Burt Lancaster) at sycophantic publicist Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), who never hesitates to degrade himself -- or anyone else, for that matter -- in pursuit of that ever-elusive ink, in the quintessential portrait of the rancid underside of The Great White Way.

The ultra-stylized dialogue by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman (who wrote the original short story) is now legendary (and quoted wholesale in everything from Diner to The Simpsons), as are Elmer Bernstein's jazz score (featuring The Chico Hamilton Quintet) and James Wong Howe's glistening, location-shot b&w cinematography, with midtown of the late 50s seen in the minutest detail, from a 46th Street hotdog stand, to the lights of Times Square (including the marquees of the since-demolished Loews State, Astor, and Rivoli theaters), to the Brill Building (doubling as Hunsecker's swanky apartment building), to a shadowy street below the Queensboro Bridge - all more vivid than ever in this gorgeous new 35mm print. There isn't a greater picture about this crazy burg.
1:45, 3:40, 5:35, 7:30, 9:25

Running time: Approx. 96 min.
AN MGM DISTRIBUTION RELEASE.

• Click here to read Andrew Sarris' review from the New York Observer
• That Old Feeling: Sweet Smells Richard Corliss on a fabulous old film - and a new Broadway musical - about America's love of gossip BY RICHARD CORLISS - Time Magazine article about SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
• The New York Times article about SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS by A.O. Scott
• Jack Mathews Article about SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS in the March 3, 2002 New York Daily News
• The New York Times article about Bruce Goldstein looking for the today's remnants of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS' Times Square

RETURN TO TOP.

from DaCapo press.
Available from Amazon.com
in hardcover (pictured at left)
and paperback (at right)