Sweet Smell of Success · reception & legacy
1957 · Alexander Mackendrick
How Sweet Smell of Success has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A box-office flop in 1957 — audiences reportedly recoiled at heartthrob Tony Curtis playing a slimy press agent — it's since been fully canonised as one of the great New York films and a high-water mark of screen dialogue.
What's debated
Fans endlessly debate whether it's actually film noir or something nastier and sui generis — a cynical showbiz drama wearing noir's clothes.
Its footprint
It's one of the most quotable films ever — 'Match me, Sidney,' 'I love this dirty town,' 'the cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river' — and J.J. Hunsecker, modelled on gossip columnist Walter Winchell, remains shorthand for toxic media power; in Barry Levinson's Diner, a character speaks almost entirely in its dialogue.
Where it stands
A Criterion-stamped, National Film Registry classic that cinephiles treat as a 'you must have seen this' — beloved on Letterboxd above all for the venom of its Clifford Odets dialogue.