sweet smell of success exclusive limited release

'It's pleasures are almost obscenely abundant'. - New York Times

'A cinematic martini with a strychnine twist .' - Variety

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image and Chapel Distribution are proud to announce the exclusive limited release of a new 35mm restoration print of Alexander Mackendrick's scintillating Sweet Smell of Success. As part of the Remembrance + the Moving Image Remembered By cinema program The Sweet Smell of Success will be screened in a double bill with Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights at 7pm from Thursday 3 July to Saturday 5 July.

Sweet Smell of Success will then continue to screen at ACMI for a limited exclusive re-release season running until Sunday 13 July.

The first American film for British director Alexander Mackendrick (known for his lighter-toned Ealing comedies such as The Ladykillers and The Man in the White Suit) perfectly realises the seedy glamour of 50s New York nightlife. A ruthless newspaper columnist JJ Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) exploits a sleazy press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) in order to prevent the marriage of his sister to a jazz musician. Featuring superb performances from its two leads, Elmer Bernstein's brilliant jazz score and James Wong Howe's stunning cinematography, Sweet Smell of Success remains a scathing and hilarious observation of the media business.

Clifford Odet's and Ernest Lehman's collaboration on the script (based on Lehman's novella Tell Me About It Tomorrow) resulted in some of the most scintillating dialogue ever written for the movies:

'You're dead, son. Get yourself buried'. (Hunsecker to Falco)

'I'd hate to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic'. (Hunsecker to Falco)

Paul Thomas Anderson, when discussing the influence of the dialogue on his own filmmaking, said: 'all the rhythms and syntax. it's so smart-ass and so dark and probably one of the greatest scripts ever written'.

Source/Courtesy: Chapel Distribution

Full season of new 35mm reissue exclusive to ACMI 3 - 13 July 2003