Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Producer: James Hill
Screenwriters: Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman
Cinematographer: James Wong Howe
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Studio: United Artists 1957
Main Acting: Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis
Film Noir has many merits and virtues in its long dark corner. One is the showcasing of Los Angeles as it lived and breathed in the 40s and 50s. Films like Crime Wave and Sunset Boulevard give us more than a glimpse into how the city looked and felt all those years ago. Since Hollywood is situated on the west coast, it is only natural that the urban sprawl of that area is mostly showcased when technicians and artists took to the streets to do location work. California gets ample time in the cinematic spotlight, or to be more accurate, stylized darkness. As a New Yorker myself, Sweet Smell Of Success is the greatest example of the Big Apple receiving the classic-era noir gaze for me. I get to see my familiar dwellings and haunts placed in a time before I existed. Photographed by cinematographer extraordinaire James Wong Howe, Sweet Smell Of Success is a richly elegant pictorial movie. It is vitalized by its urban environment and made even greater by the dramatic heft of the script. While The Naked City by Jules Dassin also incorporated Manhattan’s rich skyline and urban expanse, the rather rote story prevented me from embracing it beyond the stellar imagery. Mackendrick’s feature hits it out of the park—Yankee Stadium to be specific—on every count and temporarily revitalizes a dying genre before it would dissolve into the black one or two years later. (more…)