Sweet Smell of Success

"I'd hate to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic!"

There's no shortage of movies depicting the press as irresponsible and sensationalist, but Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success (1957) tops them all. The movie failed to find an audience in the '50s, but its unremitting cynicism remains strikingly resonant.

Press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) courts bigshot columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), running seedy errands in exchange for Hunsecker promoting his clients. But Falco fails to bring Hunsecker's sister Susan ...