SCREENING
Sweet Smell of Success
Ongoing
Dir. Alexander Mackendrick. 1957, 96 mins. DCP. With Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis. One of the great New York movies of the 1950s, Sweet Smell of Success pits Lancaster’s ruthless columnist J. J. Hunsecker against Curtis’s desperate publicist Sidney Falco in a noirish, pitch-dark morality play. The whip-smart script by Clifford Odets is rightly famous, but just as essential is the black-and-white photography by James Wong Howe, a nightmarish riot of light and darkness, much of it filmed on location in New York. Preceded by Daybreak Express (1953, 5 mins, 35mm), D. A. Pennebaker’s soaring homage to the Third Avenue El, set to music by Duke Ellington.
Tickets: $12 ($9 for senior citizens and students / free for members at the Film Lover level and above). Order tickets online. (Members may contact [email protected] with any questions regarding online reservations.)
All tickets include same-day admission to the Museum (see gallery hours). View the Museum’s ticketing policy here. For more information on membership and to join online, visit our membership page.