Sweet Smell of Success

Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Alexander Mackendrick's pitch-black noir, is yours to watch online on iFILM. Picture Manhattan after dark: Broadway neon, all-night diners, and a press agent who will sell anyone out for a line in someone else's column.

Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) lives off mentions handed down by J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), a newspaper columnist whose word can make or wreck a career overnight. Hunsecker sets a price. Break up his kid sister Susan's romance with jazz guitarist Steve Dallas, and Falco gets back in the column. So Falco goes to work with smears, planted marijuana, and blackmail. The deeper he digs, the clearer it gets that Hunsecker's feelings for his sister run well past brotherly.

The Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman script crackles with venomous one-liners, James Wong Howe shot the city like a predator stalking its prey, and the Chico Hamilton Quintet supplies the cool jazz pulse underneath. Lancaster played hard against type as an icy, bespectacled manipulator, and it stands among his finest work. Cynical, cruel, and sharper every decade. Stream Sweet Smell of Success (1957) online on iFILM.