A baby-faced gossip columnist with loose morals is coerced into a smear campaign by a press agent who has a very creepy relationship with his own sister. In true Film Noir form, this script by playwright Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman is a shining example of the dark underbelly of ‘50’s New York City nightlife. (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1957, 97m., Park Circus)
“…with conscious ambivalence Sweet Smell of Success captures the seductive, visceral excitement of New York’s gleaming, dynamic nightlife and the sad and loathsome behavior of its amoral, hustling inhabitants.” – The Guardian
Paul Cronin: Born in 1972 in London, England, UK. He is a director and producer, known for Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 (2004), A Time to Stir (2018) and Mackendrick on Film (2004). He is founder and director of Sticking Place Films and author of Herzog on Herzog and editor of Alexander Mackendrick’s On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director.
Megan Abbott: The Edgar-winning author of the novels Beware the Woman, The Turnout, Give Me Your Hand, You Will Know Me, The Fever, Dare Me, The End of Everything, Bury Me Deep, Queenpin, The Song Is You and Die a Little. Formerly a staff writer on HBO’s David Simon show, The Deuce, she is now co-creator, executive producer and show-runner of Dare Me, based upon her novel. She is also the author of a nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, and the editor of A Hell of a Woman, an anthology of female crime fiction.
