Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 9pm
This 35mm presentation is part of the great Moviedrome: Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen season. The other screening of the film on July 6th will be introduced by filmmaker and Moviedrome presenter Alex Cox.Time Out review:
A film noir from the Ealing funny man? But Alexander Mackendrick's
involvement with cosy British humour was always less innocent than it
looked: remember the anti-social wit of The Man in the White Suit, or
the cruel cynicism of The Ladykillers? Sweet Smell of Success
was the director's American debut, a rat trap of a film in which a
vicious NY gossip hustler (Tony Curtis) grovels for his 'Mr Big' (Burt Lancaster),
a monster newspaper columnist who is incestuously obsessed with
destroying his kid sister's romance... and a figure as evil and
memorable as Orson Welles in The Third Man or Robert Mitchum in The Night of
the Hunter. The dark streets gleam with the sweat of fear; Elmer
Bernstein's limpid jazz score (courtesy of Chico Hamilton) whispers
corruption in the Big City. The screen was rarely so dark or cruel.
Chris Auty
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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