"It’s a bold film, made by a bold filmmaker. Director Mackendrick’s defense of the artist and the individual against a corrupt and malevolent press and its metaphor for corrupt government remains ever pertinent. The dialogue, written by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, is exceptional"

"Few films handled Burt Lancaster’s unique brand of ceaseless virility as well as this release from 1957. Lancaster made many wonderful movies but at times almost seemed to be biting the camera lens with his crisp forcefulness. In Sweet Smell of Success, as in pictures like Birdman of Alcatraz, Lancaster sits on his patented intensity and delivers astonishing results. The gleaming, indefatigable J. J. Hunsecker is probably Lancaster’s best acting. Burnished. Terrifying. Add to that the wonderful costar turn by Tony Curtis, the photography of the legendary James Wong Howe, and a screenplay by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman. Fifties film noir at its best."

"This whirlwind cautionary tale, which explores the dark dynamic between powerful newspaper columnist J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) and the obsequious lapdog of a publicist Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), is a cinematic marvel—especially for the jaw-dropping dialogue of the screenplay, which was cowritten by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman and adapted from Lehman’s autobiographical novelette about his early experiences working for a Broadway publicist. With its high-contrast, black-and-white cinematography and jazzy Elmer Bernstein score, the film conveys a certain kind of mythical 1950s New York City more vividly than any other film I can think of. And the on-location street scenes are to die for."

"Like many of these, this movie qualifies for me partly because it was an unexpected thrill when I first saw it in the early seventies. I’m neither much a Tony Curtis nor a Burt Lancaster fan, and I’d never heard of Alexander Mackendrick (he made half his relatively few films, including The Man in the White Suit and The Ladykillers, in the UK; a later, strong U.S. job was A High Wind in Jamaica). Sweet Smell of Success, again, too, is quasi-noir. It’s a black-and-white, urban, small film about people’s bad luck and bad character, set in the Broadway cubicles and show-biz restaurants of New York’s sleazy show-world underbelly. Despite my prior relative indifference to the actors in it, they’re perfectly cast—against their standard types—in this, and do terrific jobs, and the script, by the highly skilled and literate Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets, is spectacular. James Wong Howe shot the cold-ass thing."

"Alexander Mackendrick is probably the least well-known genius director to ever live. Nowhere is his brilliance more evident than in the down-and-dirty depiction of high-class gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker and lowlife press agent Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success. The great James Wong Howe films the gritty streets of New York in the style of the tabloid newspaper photographs that the protagonists traffic in. The movie was shot entirely on location, a rarity in 1957 but probably allowed due to the triumph of Kazan’s On the Waterfront just a few years prior. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis give career-best performances in this noir that depicts the fall of the mighty Hunsecker (Lancaster) and the sniveling, conniving Falco (Curtis) as the former tries to retain his crown and the latter tries to make it to the top of the heap of garbage he so aspires to reign over. The screenplay, by giants of the trade Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, crackles with what is commonly considered some of the best dialogue in the history of cinema. I just love every single thing about this gem of sleaze. Also featured on the disc is a great documentary, Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away, about how the director, fed up with Hollywood, took a job teaching film at the then nascent CalArts and became a great influence on his students—among them James Mangold, who is featured in an interview here"