Sweet Smell of Success

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster were never better — and that’s saying something — brilliantly cast against type as a desperate small-time press agent and the monstrous gossip columnist who can make or break lives with a line. A very particular slice of 1950s New York is brilliantly realised though cinematographer’s James Wong Howe’s crisp black and white rain-slicked streets and nightclub interiors and Elmer Bernstein’s smoky jazz score.

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick.

Stars Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, and Martin Milner.

USA.

Rated PG.

Released 1957.

Runtime 96 minutes.

Selected in 1993 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.