Sweet Smell of Success

“Sweet Smell of Success. She’s going back down. ‘Cause James Wong Howe is the cinematographer of that and he’s my favorite cinematographer. So I’m going back. Come on, James, quick. I found it.”

“One of my favorite kind of Hollywood classics, Sweet Smell of Success. This is truly one of the greatest films ever made. The writing, the directing, the cinematography, the editing, the dialogue is incredible. It's written by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman and the dynamic—it's just relentless in its forward movement as a narrative and all the location shooting, New York City mid-50s. The performances, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, this is an amazing film.”

“This is one of my favorite films, Sweet Smell of Success. And I love it also because it's like a this is the actual proper sister film to The Lady Killers... That Mackendrick can go from making Lady Killers to go to making this. So the quintessential English film to the quintessential American film in one leap. And also Mackendrick wrote one of the greatest books on filmmaking and if you haven't read it you should read it immediately because it's the only book you need basically.”

“And I think The Sweet Smell of Success, another black-and-white… You can tell I’m going to lean toward beautiful cinematography, but this is a masterpiece. It’s a great part, Tony Curtis’s best part. When Tony Curtis died, his wife put a memorial thing together for the service and she put the quote from Sweet Smell on it, “The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in The River.”...”

“Oh there it is this is a great film Sweet Smell of Success...”

“Sweet Smell of Success, well, it's a nice depiction of the corruption of American press.”

“Sweet Smell of Success. Oh my God, I just love Tony Curtis in it for being the rat he was. He's a slimeball and he's always scurrying around, but Burt Lancaster is pulling the strings. He's J. J. Hunsecker, and he kind of represents a kind of Walter Winchell character, like a right-wing power monger that's evil. In the spirit of the '50s, they don't really succeed in the end, but in Real Life they would have, and they will, and they do today over and over.”

“Sweet Smell of Success has some of the greatest dialogue ever. Burt Lancaster is fantastic as this sort of horrible Walter Winchell columnist. 'I love this dirty town.'”