Sightlines · reception
How Sweet Smell of Success was received
1957 · Alexander Mackendrick · Sweet Smell of Success on Sightlines
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 canonized 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, modeled 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.
Did you know? Clifford Odets rewrote Ernest Lehman's script continuously during production — pages were famously being reworked on set as the crew shot around him, with the dialogue arriving barely ahead of the camera.