8/10
SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957). One of the most scabrous and sharply scripted Hollywood films of all time. Burt Lancaster is a gossip columnist with powers of life and death; people scurry round trying to please him. One of his jackals is Tony Curtis, a man who mortgaged his soul long ago. Lancaster is keen to get rid of his sister’s boyfriend, and tells Curtis to do his dirty work.
