This film is way over the top in every department, with only a few redeeming features, notably its photography, plus a few good actors in small roles, especially Sam Levene and Emile Meyer. The story concerns a soulless press-agent who seeks to curry favor with a powerful, corrupt Walter Winchell-like gossip columnist. Every twist and turn of the plot is telegraphed well in advance, and the machinations of the various players are out of a Victorian melodrama. What makes the movie wretched is that it, or rather those responsible for it, are so damned pleased with themselves. The atmosphere is fifties-edgy; everyone seems to be either on speed or caffeine overload. Most of the people speak to each other in little arias, expressing either self-interest, a contempt for others, or both, these always underlined by a sense of moral irony inconsistent with the characters in question. The movie is like a tabloid, always ripping the lid off this or that, telling us either what we already know or don't care to find out about various hot topics of the time. As a character study it doesn't work because the bad guy is so amoral that he is a monster pure and simple. We never get to know him because there's only one thing about him that matters, his willingness to destroy and humiliate those who won't do his bidding. If he has friends or a personal life they are not shown. He does not seem like a human being and Burt Lancaster plays him as not like a human being. Tony Curtis, as the toady of the moment, is more credible, but all we learn about him is how ambitious he is and how much he wants to be like his idol and chief torturer. No one else, not even Lancaster's (much) younger sister, really matters. In comparison one can imagine the Nazi high command as vastly more charming and magnanimous than the characters in this picture. The film barrels along at about 200 mph and is certainly never boring, but it isn't moving, either. New York at night never looked more menacing. Nor is it ever, for an instant, attractive, as it is strangely unseductive, and overall disgusting, like a bad piece of corned beef stuck in the back of the throat. In the end the picture itself seems sleazier than those people whose souls, or lack thereof, it is purporting to expose, and it left a bad taste.
Review of Sweet Smell of Success
