"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."

"I don’t know that these are chronological, particularly, and they may have occurred at different times in my life and had a meaning. But as I remember, I think there was quite an impact from someone who was able to move in his life to a very significant opportunity, and I was thinking of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, with Jimmy Stewart. That was, to me, rather inspiring, that someone with maybe a newspaper background or whatever, given that task, went into the Puzzle Palace — we would call it today “the swamp” — to put some order into it. As he saw, things needed to be sort of straightened out. And I think that that is certainly a good bit proved in my profession."