Criterion Bluray SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
This lavish edition of Sweet Smell of Success is worth your time, your money, and then some. Dialogue, music, performance, direction, cinematography and story all come together to create one of the most complex and dramatically satisfying films of the 1950s. By turns sweet and cynical and ultimately heartbreaking this down and dirty look at the smear campaign engineered by an unprincipled press agent (Tony Curtis) and a mean spirited gossip columnist (Burt Lancaster) resonates far beyond the dramatic scenario it inhabits. In a celebrity obsessed (and gossip obsessed) culture it should be required viewing by anyone who owns a TV set or surfs the internet for movie news.
I'd have more to say here but this edition is so packed with extras that they speak to the importance of The Sweet Smell of Success better than I ever could. Besides the absolutely gorgeous hi-def restoration and transfer the crackling dirty jazz soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein and The Chico Hamilton Quintet is offered in uncompressed original mono. An audio commentary by film scholar James Naremore navigates the endless angles for discussion masterfully. 2 excellent documentaries Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away (1986), and James Wong Howe: Cinematographer (1973) detail the careers and creative stylings the director and cinematographer in high detail offering great insight into their disparate career paths. There's also a fantastic and lengthy doc on Walter Winchell, the inspiration for the character of J.J. Hunsecker and a short doc with James Mangold about the mentoring relationship he enjoyed with Mackendrick early in his career.
The booklet seals the deal. It has an a critical essay from gary Giddins, two short stories by Ernest Lehman that contain characters from the film, film notes by Lehman and an excerpt from a Mackendrick book on film-making.
The New Testament book of James refers to the tongue as a source of potential destruction. This film features a razor sharp script from Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman that offers a virtual primer on the above. Men in their arrogance and lust for power willing to destroy other men, soil innocent hearts and their own souls.
