DIRECTOR: Alexander Mackendrick
PRODUCER: James Hill
PRODUCTION CO: United Artists
SCREENPLAY: Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman, based on Lehman's story "Tell Me About It Tomorrow"
​PHOTOGRAPHY: James Wong Howe
EDITOR: Alan Crosland Jr
MUSIC: Elmer Bernstein
WITH: Burt Lancaster (J J Hunsecker), Tony Curtis (Sidney Falco), Susan Harrison (Susan Hunsecker), Martin Milner (Steve Dallas), Sam Levene (Frank D'Angelo), Barbara Nichols (Rita), Jeff Donnell (Sally), Joe Frisco (Herbie Temple), Emile Meyer (Lt Harry Kello), Edith Atwater (Mary) 

REVIEWS

“A film noir from the Ealing funny man? But 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 (Curtis) grovels for his 'Mr Big' (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 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.”

— Time Out

“The cinematic brilliance of Sweet Smell of Success… benefits enormously from its settings — some real locations, others precise studio reproductions — and from Howe’s razor-sharp lighting and edgy traveling shots. The picture’s bite also comes from Odets, who was hired for a three-week rewrite but stayed on for months, sometimes banging out lines the same day a scene was shot; his 'ricochet dialogue', whereby words are spoken to one person but aimed at another, is crucial to the story’s power.”

– David Sterritt, Cineaste

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Whanganui​
​Monday, 06 March, 7.00pm

Nelson   
Tuesday, 16 May, 6.00pm

Palmerston North
​Wednesday, 31 May, 6.00pm

Auckland   
Monday, 26 June, 6:15pm
​
​Canterbury  
Monday, 03 July, 7.00pm
​
​Wellington   
Monday, 10 July, 6.15pm

​Queenstown    
Tuesday, 15 August, 8.15pm

Dunedin    
Wednesday, 13 September, 7.30pm

​Hamilton
Monday, 30 October, 6.30pm​

New Plymouth
​Wednesday, 08 November, 6.00pm

NEW YORK ON SCREEN >> ​