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Why Can't I Speak Like These Guys?

© David Macdonald

Well, it's been a month or so since I've watched this film, but I will attempt to review it adequately. The film in question is the 1957 picture Sweet Smell of Success, with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, and is certainly a good example of how different some of the old Hollywood pictures were to many of the big hits of today. The difference isn't so much in storyline, but in the dialogue, which I'll get to in a bit.

The story is about Lancaster, the biggest gossip columnist in NYC, and Curtis, a talent agent who sucks up to Lancaster, giving him scoops, and doing missions for him, in hopes that he and his clients can get some press. Right from the start, we can see that there's tension between these two men. Curtis goes to pick up the evening edition, and doesn't find what he wants to see; therefore, he has to field angry calls from people who were promised a positive write-up. Curtis tries in vain to get on Lancaster's good side... but he's a hard man to deal with. Lancaster's character is an egomaniac, plain and simple. He'll chew you up and spit you out, and he has no issues about treating Curtis badly, just to anger him. But soon, he does have a mission for Curtis .... to find out some dirt on a musician, who's going out with Lancaster's sister.

Lancaster is incredibly possessive of his sister, for whatever reason, and is willing to destroy her boyfriend's life. How he does this is rather clever. He gets Curtis to do the dirty work, but the results of that dirty work don't find their way into Lancaster's column. In fact, he gets Curtis to submit a blind tip (something with no names, but many tantalizing details) to a competing columnist. Of course, the idea is that Lancaster can't be implicated by his sister and boyfriend for planting this false story, and also can't be seen, publicly, as the sort of guy who would trash someone with such innuendo.

The dialogue in this film is something else, especially when you compare it to some of the stuff being written today. Most films today, while they might have clever or witty dialogue, will usually just have speech serviceable enough to move the scene along. Sweet Smell of Success, however, was, for me, the epitome of the verbal games that screenwriters often played, and, to be honest, was a bit of a challenge for me. Dimwitted me! I can't keep up with a 1950's picture, but there you go. The truth was that I was trying to figure out, and keep up with, the dialogue, which often hampered my enjoyment of the picture. The dialogue is way too clever; nobody in the world talks like this! Everyone speaks in cutting remarks, and clever witticism, which, if nothing else, shows that these characters must be geniuses, if they're able to think up such perfect statements at the same rate as we feeble folk muster up the undistinguished stuff we mutter to each other daily.