What is The Big Knife / Sweet Smell of Success about?

Name: The Big Knife / Sweet Smell of Success
Genre: Drama

THE BIG KNIFE, 1955, MGM Repertory, 111 min. Clifford Odets and James Poe’s play about the black heart of Hollywood gets the full soap opera treatment from director Robert Aldrich. Rough-hewn matinee idol Jack Palance gets the twice-over from venal studio boss Rod Steiger, spineless agent Everett Sloane, damaged spouse Ida Lupino, and everyone else in his orbit. SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, 1957, MGM Repertory, 95 min. Directed by maestro Alexander Mackendrick, this legendary film seems to get better with each viewing. Burt Lancaster soars in a thinly-veiled portrait of powerful Broadway columnist Walter Winchell, with Tony Curtis in perhaps his finest performance as two-faced, sycophantic press agent ‘Sidney Falco.’ Some of the most deliciously dyspeptic dialogue in screen history is uttered courtesy of writers Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets, all complemented by James Wong Howe’s cinema verité camerawork and a brassy Elmer Bernstein score.

The Big Knife / Sweet Smell of Success

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What is The Big Knife / Sweet Smell of Success about?: THE BIG KNIFE, 1955, MGM Repertory, 111 min. Clifford Odets and James Poe’s play about the black heart of Hollywood gets the full soap opera treatment from director Robert Aldrich. Rough-hewn matinee idol Jack Palance gets the twice-over from venal studio boss Rod Steiger, spineless agent Everett Sloane, damaged spouse Ida Lupino, and everyone else in his orbit.

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, 1957, MGM Repertory, 95 min. Directed by maestro Alexander Mackendrick, this legendary film seems to get better with each viewing. Burt Lancaster soars in a thinly-veiled portrait of powerful Broadway columnist Walter Winchell, with Tony Curtis in perhaps his finest performance as two-faced, sycophantic press agent ‘Sidney Falco.’ Some of the most deliciously dyspeptic dialogue in screen history is uttered courtesy of writers Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets, all complemented by James Wong Howe’s cinema verité camerawork and a brassy Elmer Bernstein score.