Sweet Smell of Success is not only one of the best American films ever made but it’s one of the best new Blu-ray releases of the last week. But then again, I’m not really telling you anything you didn’t figure out for yourself already, just by seeing the Criterion logo on the package art for the disc – a guarantee of excellence in presentation and features. Any doubts you might have about the film itself should be put to rest just by watching the vintage trailer above. Curtis and Lancaster just light up the screen here.
- “In the swift, cynical Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Alexander Mackendrick, Burt Lancaster stars as the vicious Broadway gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis as Sidney Falco, the unprincipled press agent Hunsecker ropes into smearing the up-and-coming jazz musician romancing his beloved sister. Featuring deliciously unsavory dialogue, in an acid, brilliantly structured script by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, and noirish neon cityscapes from Oscar-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe, Sweet Smell of Success is a cracklingly cruel dispatch from the kill-or-be-killed wilds of 1950s Manhattan.”
SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS 
(February 22, 2010 – MSRP $39.95)
Video: 1.66:1 1080p
Audio: uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Special Features:
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New audio commentary by film scholar James Naremore
- Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away, a 1986 documentary featuring interviews with director Alexander Mackendrick, actor Burt Lancaster, producer James Hill, and more
- James Wong Howe: Cinematographer, a 1973 documentary about the Oscar-winning director of photography, featuring lighting tutorials with Howe
- New video interview with film critic and historian Neil Gabler (Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity) about legendary columnist Walter Winchell, inspiration for the character J. J. Hunsecker
- New video interview with filmmaker James Mangold about Mackendrick, his instructor and mentor
- Original theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Gary Giddins, two short stories by Ernest Lehman featuring the characters from the film, notes about the film by Lehman, and an excerpt from Mackendrick’s book On Film-making
Discussion
No comments for “[VIDEO] Sweet Smell of Success Blu-ray Trailer”