A Walk on the Noir Side

[Bronxgirl48]

I like SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, avidly, avidly, lol. It reeks of Clifford Odets, who fascinates me, because he seemed to be all about the tensions and conflicts between art vs. commerce -- sensitive creative souls forced to sell out in the market places of life, something I think Odets knew intimately. From the Group Theatre to (in the words of Alfred in MIRACLE ON 34th STREET, "make a buck, make a buck", in Hollywood, and then the business with HUAC. I haven't read the Lehman novella the movie is adapted from, but SSOS's dialogue sounds an awful lot like idealist-turned-cynic Odets. The relationships between JJ, Sidney, Steve, Kello, and Susie, are filled with sado-masochistic metaphors. "Punish", "punishment" "chastise", "discipline", "whip" "threat" are words used to queasy power-play effect. Sidney's mantra of dog-eat-dog is reinforced with this language of dominance and submission. Hunsecker is an ego-driven, rigid, self-loathing, sexually repressed gargoyle who can astutely size up Sidney's world of "moral twilight" but apparently can't see into his own diseased soul, although on some level he knows he's damned. Kinetic Falco is almost like the stolid, immobile, reptilian Hunsecker's id, let loose for the destruction of enemies, then reigned in for purposes of self-protective control before the cage is opened once again.

 

No, I don't think Susie is an innocent. Let's just leave it at that for now, because I don't even want to think about possible scenarios...

 

Tony and Burt were born to play these roles. Curtis as Sidney Falco is like some curly-haired, sleazy urban Pan. Lancaster as JJ Hunsecker has infinite reserves of coiled, basilisk, satanic grace and sinister power. Their unholy pas de deux is an acrid "joy" to watch.

 

 

SSOS is I think a masterpiece, and possibly the best film to come out of the 1950's. Screenplay, direction, music, entire cast, it's pitch-perfect, effortlessly trenchant, authentically rancid, and, of course, brilliantly quotable.

 

Edited by: Bronxgirl48 on Aug 11, 2011 4:26 AM

[JackFavell]

Wow! That's fascinating, Bronxie! I really love your take on SSOS. I had no idea you liked it so much, nor that you knew anything about Clifford Odets.

 

I have always liked Odets, even when he is at his most swampy or overbaked. I acted in his play *Waiting for Lefty* some years ago and always felt a respect for his ideals, though he never really lived up to his initial promise as a playwright. I still think he has something to say nowadays.

 

When I was looking up Odets just now, I found a photo from SSOS thrown in amongst the photos of the intellectual looking writer. I don't have a copy of the film of my own, so the photo I saw suddenly propelled me further into your discussion of Sydney and JJ.

 

 

 

 

The first thing I thought of when looking at this picture of the two men is how much it reminded me of *Citizen Kane* - the scene where Kane and his wife are sitting at the table and years pass until they finally have nothing to say to one another? I realized how much Sydney and JJ are like a husband and wife....

 

Look at Sydney's face - the hurt, reproachful suppressed anger there .... and look at JJ, purposefully looking down and away, negating Sydney by his very body position, hiding behind his glasses. Like George and Martha in *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf*. Any wife or husband who has gone through a bad stretch in their marriage knows those looks only too well. They have an almost too intimate knowledge of one another. Here is another intimate photo of the two of them together:

 

 

Look how close they are to one another... I am tempted to say that Sydney is the wife and JJ is the husband, but I dislike that kind of categorization in general. So let's just say that Sydney is the submissive, JJ is the dominant one. How many couples have you seen at a party in this same stance?

 

 

This whole movie is about crowding, in a crowded city:

 

 

 

where everyone is looking over someone else's shoulder:

 

 

 

 

But in this movie, that closeness is raised to the nth degree. Crowding as a technique for subverting the will.

 

Or crowding someone out:

 

 

Look how small Sydney's head is in the above shot.

 

I'd been wondering what gave this movie it's incestuous feeling - How did MacKendrick capture that sado-**** that you talk about with his camera? and I found out by accident.

 

There are tons of photos from the movie online showing those dominant and submissive set-ups, which to me anyway are not clear when watching the movie... it just moves too fast and the words bite too hard for you to notice the actual set-ups or the way it's filmed (except for the crisp black and whiteness of it). One knows it is done well, and it's exciting to see the camera moving so expertly to show every grain of dirt, every bead of sweat...... but how MacKendrick achieved such fear and emotional pitch eluded me till I saw these photos.

 

Even the camera lurks way too close, holding the actors in place with nowhere to go:

 

 

 

the actors are exposed and we are a witness to those jangling nerve endings. No wonder the characters come out, say things inappropriately. They can't help themselves, they've been crowded for too long.

 

SSOS reminds me of a family reunion in which the members of the family can't stand one another, but can't get away from each other either.

 

Edited by: JackFavell on Aug 11, 2011 2:59 PM

[JackFavell]

I like SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, avidly, avidly, lol. It reeks of Clifford Odets, who fascinates me, because he seemed to be all about the tensions and conflicts between art vs. commerce -- sensitive creative souls forced to sell out in the market places of life, something I think Odets knew intimately.

 

I haven't read the Lehman novella the movie is adapted from, but SSOS's dialogue sounds an awful lot like idealist-turned-cynic Odets.

 

It seems like you also understand that conflict - do you have a thwarted art career in your past? I think most artists understand this all too well.

 

 

The relationships between JJ, Sidney, Steve, Kello, and Susie, are filled with sado-masochistic metaphors. "Punish", "punishment" "chastise", "discipline", "whip" "threat" are words used to queasy power-play effect. Sidney's mantra of dog-eat-dog is reinforced with this language of dominance and submission. *Hunsecker is an ego-driven, rigid, self-loathing, sexually repressed gargoyle who can astutely size up Sidney's world of "moral twilight" but apparently can't see into his own diseased soul, although on some level he knows he's damned.*

 

Ah...so that;s why he wears those glasses - not to see the better with, but to block out anything he doesn't want to see.

 

Kinetic Falco is almost like the stolid, immobile, reptilian Hunsecker's id, let loose for the destruction of enemies, then reigned in for purposes of self-protective control before the cage is opened once again.

 

That's beautiful! Even those pictures I posted show Sydney as small, like a ventriloquist's dummy or a puppet to be released and pulled back again.

 

No, I don't think Susie is an innocent. Let's just leave it at that for now, because I don't even want to think about possible scenarios...

 

 

 

 

 

I find that the most fascinating thing in your post. I have to go back and watch Susie's scenes with this in mind.

 

Tony and Burt were born to play these roles. Curtis as Sidney Falco is like some curly-haired, sleazy urban Pan. Lancaster as JJ Hunsecker has infinite reserves of coiled, basilisk, satanic grace and sinister power. Their unholy pas de deux is an acrid "joy" to watch.

 

 

You bet they were, and your words are PERFECT. How do you capture someone in words like that? It's such a gift.

 

 

I can't believe this film was not popular, and yet I can.

 

 

SSOS is I think a masterpiece, and possibly the best film to come out of the 1950's. Screenplay, direction, music, entire cast, it's pitch-perfect, effortlessly trenchant, authentically rancid, and, of course, brilliantly quotable.

 

 

I think you may be right. It's definitely on the top of my favorite fifties movies, and I only saw it for the first time a few months ago.

 

 

 

[movieman1957]

And you worry about your writing. Don't. You're too good.

[JackFavell]

Thank you! :x

 

 

[Bronxgirl48]

Whoa, Jackie! Man I'm learning SO much on these boards, and especially now about SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, from Frank's brilliant comparison to THE LITTLE FOXES, Maven's amazing character analysis run-down, and your terrifically perceptive VIRGINIA WOOLF, family-reunion analogies, I'm in "teach me, teach me" heaven, lol. By the way, do you notice how similiar Clifford's dialogue is to Rod Serling's wordsmith wizardry teleplays on The Twilight Zone? With many of those episodes,especially the ones where the male characters caught up in the rat-race yearn to return to the innocence of childhood? There was a lot of Serling in these protagonists, as he also had to make "adjustments" in reconciling artistic integrity with commercial success. I haven't myself had to make these difficult choices, or compromise too much, lol.

 

Thanks so much for your generous comments about my writing; occasionally it's almost as enjoyable for me to write about the good films like SSOS as it is for, say, THE GIANT CLAW.

 

I love what you say about JJ's glasses, and that he sees only what he wants to. Yet there is his first scene on the balcony (after looking in on a sleeping Susie, immediately after Sidney calls him up with the (false) news that Steve has been taken care of) showing Hunsecker staring down at his lighted night city, the dirty town he loves, with the most bereft, saddened look on his face, as though he knows he's already lost Susie. However, I can't tell if he really knows why, or if he truly does but, like the scorpion who stings, it's just his "metier", and he can't change doing what comes naturally.

 

 

About Odets, I don't know, I concede his intellectual gifts, but as a human being, a mensch, I do believe he fell quite short of the mark. Ever since I saw FRANCES, and how he manipulated an idealistic Farmer into doing the Group Theatre's "Golden Boy" but then dumped her as a lover when his wife Luise Rainer returned from Europe, and when Hollywood came a-calling to do the movie but with another actress, he sort of gave me the creeps if you want to know the truth. I think he was a tortured soul on many levels, but I can't warm to Odets.

 

 

Falco wallows in the submissive mud to get ahead and Hunsecker is instrinsically dominant, your total control freak who is nevertheless passive-aggressive and tied to his sister's apron strings. They are definitely George and Martha, although frankly it's sometimes hard to tell which is which. They seem emotionally invested in each other, a real love/hate relationship. The script has Sidney being called on the carpet (first by Steve, whom the camera has loom over Sidney in most scenes; then by JJ's secretary Mary) for not exhibiting the more nobler aspects of manhood. Kello seems rather, um, like a rejected suitor whenever Sidney, or should I say "Snooks", calls him "fat". Kello squeezes JJ's hands so hard in a greeting that JJ says, "Am I supposed to cry uncle?" All this S&M game-playing, eeek!

 

Edited by: Bronxgirl48 on Aug 12, 2011 1:44 AM

[JackFavell]

I never thought of Odets as similar to Serling before.... I feel a little sad because I think Serling is actually the more talented. I am not sure I can reconcile the two writers with one another.... kingrat wrote elsewhere that Odets at his worst is like brown gravy poured over everything , and I can totally see this....But Serling to me is razor sharp in his approach. Both are questioning, ambivalent writers though, and their themes are similar. Both men seem equally drawn to the grey flannel world, and equally repulsed by it.

 

Odets as a human being may be second only to Elmer Rice in creepiness.

 

I love what you say about JJ's glasses, and that he sees only what he wants to. Yet there is his first scene on the balcony (after looking in on a sleeping Susie, immediately after Sidney calls him up with the (false) news that Steve has been taken care of) showing Hunsecker staring down at his lighted night city, the dirty town he loves, with the most bereft, saddened look on his face, as though he knows he's already lost Susie. However, I can't tell if he really knows why, or if he truly does but, like the scorpion who stings, it's just his "metier", and he can't change doing what comes naturally.

 

Did you happen to catch Mr. Arkadin the other day? I bet you did! Everything comes around on itself eventually. The scorpion is the crux of that movie, and of Welles work in general - can a man change into something he is not, even if following his own nature means his own demise? A man in youth has the strength to change, but not the self knowledge, whereas the man in age has the self awareness to change but not the will. The parable of The Frog and the Scorpion is pre-eminent in that film.....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugmy_zlyPoQ

 

Now can you imagine Orson in SSOS?

[Bronxgirl48]

I do prefer Rod's "disillusionment" over Cliff's. I read that Odets supposedly tried to commit suicide three times during his early twenties, and that he was a "melancholy" person. Very sad.

 

I didn't catch MR. ARKADIN this time, but yes, I always remembered that fable! Wow, Orson as Hunsecker...let me roll that around in the nether regions of what is laughingly referred to as my mind. Wasn't Burt actually considering Welles as JJ? I just can't see Orson delivering the "toting THIS one around for YOU" lines with anywhere near the icy-hot, bitter creepiness of Lancaster. JJ's power is quiet, understated, coming out in contemptuous poisonous dribbles, and that wasn't Orson's style.

 

 

I agree with Frank that all the SSOS women have "heart". I like Susan Harrison's portrayal of Susie. She doesn't play her as a pouty rebel nor does she hint at sexual waywardness in any over-the-top way (like Barbara Loden as Warren Beatty's sister in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS. She's vulnerable, insecure, but I don't really see her as weak. Susie is only 19, but seems wise beyond her years, because she can feel pity for her brother and Sidney. I like Harrison's "look" as Susie -- "arty" and sensitive. Barbara Nichols is terrific as cigarette girl Rita. The "Palm Springs, two years ago. Don't tell Sidney" line takes a bit of the sympathy I have away from her, as it's obvious she's done THAT sort of thing before, but, gee, she's got that kid in military school, and "Honey, he's gonna HELP you!" Okay, but, couldn't she learn to type maybe? JJ's secretary Mary is a bit brittle, but, she'd have to be, working with that man. However, she does see something "more" to Sidney than just a super-rat. The long-suffering Sally reminds me of Shelly Winters from A PLACE IN THE SUN. "Sidney, I'm going to have a baby!" The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river.....

 

I love LureneTuttle. Remember her as Cary's secretary in MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE? The look she gives him when he comes up with a particularly awful advertising slogan, is priceless.

 

Edited by: Bronxgirl48 on Aug 13, 2011 7:12 PM

[Bronxgirl48]

I just read the imdb SSOS cast listings, and they say Odets has an uncredited part, as a man standing outside a theatre. I'm going back to YouTube and see if I can spot him.

[JackFavell]

That's awesome! I'll try to look for him too, but probably tomorrow. I don't have time tonight - It's a sleepover night and I'm on popcorn duty.

 

Talk to you tomorrow, if I survive.

[CineMaven]

I've never heard it called 'popcorn duty' before, but hey...I'm from New York.

[Bronxgirl48]

Ha, good luck! You'll be fine.

 

I think I've spotted Clifford -- right after Sidney leaves Mary's office and heads over to see Herbie Temple, walking towards the backstage entrance. He might be the guy with the hat who's getting a shoeshine.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Edited by: Bronxgirl48 on Aug 14, 2011 12:01 AM

[JackFavell]

Man you have a good eye! I never would have caught that, especially as you can only see him on a fade in.... I think you're right, it sure looks like Odets.

[CineMaven]

Didn't Odets have an affair (and an ensuing scandal) with Mary Astor? Diary found, trial, all the details...

[JackFavell]

I believe it was George S. Kaufman (WHA???? ), not Clifford Odets who was involved in the Mary Astor scandal.

 

A diary was produced by her husband, Richard Thorpe's, lawyers, who said it was Mary's. The contents was sequestered from the public almost right after it was presented in court (and excerpts published in TIME magazine, which pronounced that the prose found inside the diary was as "Purple as the ink it was written in.")

 

In it, Astor is supposed to have gushed over Kaufman's lovemaking abilities, sexual prowess and ... um... "perfect fitting" nether regions. According to Astor, the diary was used as a ploy by her husband to take their child away from her, and wreck her career. She did admit to the affair under oath, however, but only after mentioning her husband's numerous affairs, with women coming in and out of the house where their daughter was a witness. One of his lovers allegedly chased after him in the dining room and stabbed him in the thigh with a fork.

 

 

Astor said that her husband knew all about her affair with Kaufman and condoned it, until the custody trial came up. Astor said that the diary was tampered with by her husband and his attorneys, and that is when the diasry was barred from the public. 182 pages of the 200 page diary then disappeared while in Thorpe's attorney's brother's possession, and has never been found.

 

Edited by: JackFavell on Aug 14, 2011 2:00 PM

[JackFavell]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2009/01/movie-star-my-2.html

[JackFavell]

I love this article because it totally re-assesses Mary Astor and her career, starting with *Act of Violence*, one of my favorite of her roles:

 

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/67/67maryastorsmith.php

[CineMaven]

OH NO!

 

 

 

Oh no ya don't. They're not getting their perfect fitting nether regions any where NEAR me.

 

 

LADY ASTOR...

 

 

Thanx for those articles. I'm going to print them up and read later. But I know they can't compete with what you wrote...from the heart. Think about getting published Jack. Seriously.

 

Edited by: CineMaven on Aug 14, 2011 2:47 PM...b'cuz I had to add another egghead.

[Bronxgirl48]

Mary's personal life was hell, and her romances certainly eclectic.

For the life of me, I don't know how anyone could go from John Barrymore to George S. Kaufman....

 

 

Edited by: Bronxgirl48 on Aug 14, 2011 2:55 PM

[CineMaven]

Me neither. Beats me. (That pix you posted doesn't make a very good case). People have their reasons. The heart wants what it wants.

 

 

 

When you have a chance, would you come back Bronxie...Tor wants to chastise you.

[Bronxgirl48]

LOL, did you know that a fellow "actor" once described Johnson as "a big sugar bun"?

 

He also has a Tony Curtis connection! Bit part in HOUDINI.

[CineMaven]

Awwwww Tor. I love 'em big and loveable. I'll take Buddy Baer too.

[JackFavell]

TOR??? I thought you were talking about BEN Johnson.

 

Yeah, my sugar bun. Sweet. :x

[Bronxgirl48]

I just remembered that Susan Harrison plays the ballerina in that Twilight Zone episode, "Five Characters In Search Of An Exit"

[CineMaven]

Ha!

 

Bronxie...The Twilight Zone. Aaah.