Sweet Smell of Success

The script for this film was written while it was being shot. Clifford Odets sat in a trailer typing the day's dialogue, working with Ernest Lehman on an adaptation of Lehman's own short story Tell Me About It Tomorrow. That created tension on set. Burt Lancaster was both star and producer and kept trying to take the direction out of Alexander Mackendrick's hands, and shooting on location in New York without a finished script made it worse. J. J. Hunsecker is Broadway's most powerful gossip columnist and Sidney Falco is the press agent who will do anything to stay in his favour. Hunsecker is based directly on Walter Winchell. He wants his sister's boyfriend removed and gives the job to Falco. Cinematographer James Wong Howe shot New York in neon and shadow, and the film stands as one of the best records of the city at night. It opened on 27 June 1957 and flopped. In 1993 the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry. Who it is for: viewers who want the most poisonous dialogue writing in noir and a look at the relationship between the press and power. Who it is not for: anyone in search of a sympathetic character. There is not one well-meaning figure in it, and nobody is fully punished.