Oh, days where a blog post is due, is there anything for quenching for my love of academia. OK- so, I have to analyze a film, and as it's a personal favorite of mine, and is coming around the Film Forum sometime in the next few weeks, I'm going to write about Alexander MacKendrick's amazing, amazing film, Sweet Smell of Success (deftly written by the great Ernest Lehman and Cliff Odets). To give a brief plot summary, the film concerns a bottom of the barrel publicist (played by Tony Curtis) trying to gain the good graces of a powerful and cruel newspaper columnist (Burt Lancaster). It's a film where every character is completely morally corrupt, and filled with fantastic, hyper stylized dialog (i.e.- "The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river"); it takes the cinematic tropes of noir and adds a thematic exploration of the media and it's impact on society.
As stated the film does borrow from the classic Noir tropes; exceptionally stark "low key lighting" (ironically named as the key light is dominant). Cinematically, to capture the claustrophobia of the film (which is primarily set in dingy apartments, nightclubs-seedy and otherwise- and offices, the cinematographer (the great James Wong Howe) uses a lot of tight close-ups, often from exaggerated angles (low shots or high shots to emphasize power or fear). The film is also a unique mix of studio and location photography- the set bound shots look static, obviously mounted, suggesting the firm control of the Mephistophelic Lancaster character, but on location, the cameras appear to be handheld, suggesting the anarchy of New York.
In closing, visually, the film is beautiful, and in terms of story, character and dialogue, the film is second to none.
