speaking of Sweet (though i dont know why you would be surprised by odets/lancaster/curtis)...
the collaboration people remember is ''Sweet Smell of Success,'' produced by Hecht-Hill-Lancaster. (James Hill, a writer, producer and world-class hanger-on, made the company a troika.) Too gimlet-eyed for moviegoers and many critics when it came out, ''Sweet Smell'' ruthlessly unmasked the unholy alliance between journalism and publicity at a time when people did not speak of such things. We're still in that time, come to think of it.
The principal characters are J. J. Hunsecker, an all-powerful columnist modeled on Walter Winchell, and Sidney Falco, the ambitious press agent in the great man's thrall. Lancaster is in full cerebral mode as Hunsecker, physically almost inert, while Curtis dances around him. In many of the most famous scenes, he is sitting down, staring up through glasses smeared with vaseline to further fog the windows to a darkened soul. Based on a novella by Ernest Lehmann, a former press agent who had been one of Winchell's gofers, the screenplay was taken to the next level of crackling cynicism by Clifford Odets. Odets, in full ''Barton Fink'' mode, was on his last legs career-wise but still able to dash off on-set rewrites like Falco's ''the cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river.''
Almost every line in the movie seems memorable, either because of the words or their delivery. Hunsecker's exultation, ''I love this dirty town.'' Falco announcing, ''From now on the best of everything is good enough for me,'' and, to his naive secretary: ''This is life. Get used to it.'' Originally, the partners had thought of Orson Welles for Hunsecker until Lancaster said, ''What about me?'' It wasn't a stretch. He had already become a maniacal control freak, with a reputation as ''one of the rudest individuals in Hollywood,'' Look magazine reported in 1953.
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/07/movies/film-burt-lancaster-s-brawny-melancholy.html
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[deleted]
6 years ago
It is a movie which has been forgotten in my opinion. I watched it for the first time about six months and thought it was a wonderful film-noir. Much darker than I expected. Curtis deserved a Best Supporting Oscar nomination.
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jriley555 (8215)
6 years ago
its on my short list, a superb film. feral.
it'll stop a thinking person in their tracks.
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