Where have I been? Not that I actually have consistent readers awaiting my every entry with bated breath, but I was at the Austin Film Festival. Which was awesome. One of the events at the festival was a screening of the 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success with an introduction and discussion by Kenneth Turan, the film critic for the Los Angeles Times. So, it was back to the Drafthouse, the site of my Independence Day field trip.
Sweet Smell of Success starts Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, our decidedly homoerotic friend from Spartacus. Curtis plays a publicity agent called Sidney Falco. Burt Lancaster plays an all powerful newspaper columnist called J.J. Hunsecker. Hunsecker's little sister, Susan, is in love with a jazz musician called Steve Dallas. Seriously, how do these people think they can get by with these names? Doesn't Hunsecker and Falco seem like it should be a buddy cop show? J.J. wants Sidney to break up the romance between Susan and Steve or he's generally going to make Sidney's professional life suck. The film follows Sidney around New York as he wheels and deals to improve his own career and break up the romance. Sidney concocts a plan in which he'll smear Steve and then have J.J. stand up for him only to have Steve to go berserk because he knows J.J. was behind it and then Steve looks like the lunatic. No wonder this guy's name is Dallas because this whole thing pretty much looks like the plot of an episode of Dallas.
Anyway, Sue Ellen hires a private detective to get proof that J.R.-- wait, sorry about that. This whole thing goes down as planned and Steve goes off on J.J. mission accomplished, the lovers are divided. Yet this is not good enough for J.J. because when Steve insulted him, he didn't just insult him, he insulted his readers and thus America. Watch Glenn Beck much, do you, J.J.? So, he does what any man would do in the same situation: he has Sidney plant marijuana on him and has him beaten and arrested by corrupt cops. That's rational, right?
So, Sidney comes to the house and tries to keep Susan from killing herself, who has sort of set him up. Sidney stops her from jumping off the balcony and then Susan sort of lets J.J. think Sidney tried to rape her. She relents in the end and tells the truth, but not really before J.J. is going to set Sidney up to get Dallas-ed by the cops. Susan leaves home to be with Steve and leaves J.J. heartbroken and Sidney just broken.
The thing that everyone commented on in the discussion was the cinematography and how fresh the movie felt. It used actual locations in New York and that in itself lends the film a kind of awesome, "This must be what Mad Men felt like" kind of energy. It sort of had a strange reception history: not being recognized in its own time and later seen as a masterpiece. What struck me about the film was the phenomenon of violence, you didn't see the onscreen physical violence and it reminded me of something Martin Scorsese said about Age of Innocence: that it was the most violent film he'd ever made because people's hearts were being broken. I felt like that was the case here: we don't see Steve and Sidney getting beat down, but we do see people's hearts getting broken by the realities of the world.
By the way, I recommend The Breakfast Club if you're ever at the Drafthouse for the brunch menu.
Questions, comments, concerns? Why don't you post them?
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