Kick-Back Friday: March 2008 Archives
Like its precedessor All About Eve, 1957's Sweet Smell of Success highlights the negative symbiosis between those who must have publicity and those who must craft it. The fact that Burt Lancaster delivers a historical performance as a Walter Winchell-like gossip columnist, J. J. Hudsucker, is no surprise. But who knew that Tony Curtis could hold his own as the slimy press agent Sidney Falco? The scenes between the two in Hudsucker's hangout, New York's 21 Club, are acting knockouts. Clifford Odets takes part of the screenwriting credit along with Ernest Lehman, who wrote the novella.
And yet another noir classic, Angel Face: Director Otto Preminger sends the poor-boy-rich-girl hook-up in some laughably hellish directions.* Starring a young, cast-against-type Jean Simmons and a PW (cast somewhat against type) Robert Mitchum.
*And isn't every great noir classic really a comedy?
Impeccably cast, written, and directed, this 1995 version of Persuasion is, by far and away, so much better than the recent Masterpiece version that it's not even worth discussing. Amanda Root is perfection as the plainish, sensible Anne Elliott, and is Ciarán Hinds (Rome, Munich) even capable of ever giving a bad performance?
