The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

After finishing season 1 of Breaking Bad, the dark TV series on AMC, I watched the extras where the creator and writer Vince Gilligan of that well-written show, said one of his favorite classics was The Sweet Smell of Success. He extolled the movies great writing and rapid fire dialogue. Sweet Smell of Success stars Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster as ruthless publicity agent and overbearing newspaper columnist. The movie’s main conflict is about Falco, Curtis, who is trying to break up Hunsecker’s, Lancaster, sister’s relationship with a guitarist in exchange for more publicity. Yeah, a guitarist, like that is sooo bad. The movie depicts a completely different world from the modern movie where women are helpless and easily manipulated, and you can be taken down by insinuating that someone smokes “reefer.” The dialogue is definitely rapid fire, it reminds of the type of writing done on The West Wing, where you miss most of it and would like to go back to pick it up. Sweet Smell of Success is definitely an interesting slice of movie history that I was not of aware of before and am glad to know about, but did I enjoy it? Enhhhh. Somewhat, I guess.