Sweet smell of success 1957 - A sharp and bitter urban masterpiece

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 8,2

Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Main Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Barbara Nichols

"Ernest Lehman drew upon his experiences as a Broadway press agent to write the devastating a clef short story 'Tell Me About Tomorrow'. This in turn was adapted by Lehman and Clifford Odets into the sharp-edged, penetrating feature film Sweet Smell of Success. Burt Lancaster stars as J. J. Hunsecker, a Walter Winchell-style columnist who wields his power like a club, steamrolling friends and enemies alike. Tony Curtis co-stars as Sidney Falco, a sycophantic press agent who'd sell his grandmother to get an item into Hunsecker's popular newspaper column. Hunsecker enlists Falco's aid in ruining the reputation of jazz guitarist Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), who has had the temerity to court Hunsecker's sister Susan (Susan Harrison). Falco contrives to plant marijuana on Dallas, then summons corrupt, sadistic NYPD officer Harry Kello (Emile Meyer), who owes Hunsecker several favors, to arrest the innocent singer.
The real Walter Winchell, no longer as powerful as he'd been in the 1940s but still a man to be reckoned with, went after Ernest Lehman with both barrels upon the release of Sweet Smell of Success. Winchell was not so much offended by the unflattering portrait of himself as by the dredging up of an unpleasant domestic incident from his past.
While Success was not a success at the box office, it is now regarded as a model of street-smart cinematic cynicism. The electric performances of the stars are matched by the taut direction of Alex MacKendrick, the driving jazz score of Elmer Bernstein, and the evocative nocturnal camerawork of James Wong Howe, setting the nocturnal mood of New York's lost theaters and nightclubs.
Though a de facto N.Y.C. companion to Billy Wilder's equally superb and mordant West Coast showbiz exposé Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sweet Smell suffered an ignominious contemporary fate more akin to Wilder's acid press satire Ace in the Hole (1951). Since then, Sweet Smell of Success has aged gracefully into a masterwork; it was adapted not so gracefully as a Broadway musical in 2002." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

From here to eternity 1953 - Pearl Harbor, Schofield Barracks, aspirations & frustrations

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 7,8

Director: Fred Zinnemann
Main Cast: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine

"There were few movies greeted with more anticipation than Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity when it opened in 1953. Adapted from one of the best-selling novels of the previous ten years, it was a film for which everyone had high expectations. It lived up to all of them and then some, adding a new level of violence and frankness to popular dramatic films just when the public was ready to accept these elements. (However, the movie couldn't even hint at an aspect that James Jones' novel mentioned almost at its outset: the homosexual advances that Prewitt parried from his former sergeant, resulting in his transfer to a rifle company.)
Burt Lancaster, who'd previously established himself as a hero-victim in a series of film noirs made under the auspices of Universal and as a costume hero in a pair of Warner Bros. period adventure films (The Flame and the Arrow, The Crimson Pirate), transformed himself into the quintessential macho leading man with his performance; Montgomery Clift gave the performance of his life as Robert E. Lee Prewitt, unwilling boxer and trumpet player; ex-navy enlisted man Ernest Borgnine dominated every scene he was in as Sgt. Judson, the most vicious enlisted man seen onscreen in a mainstream American movie up to that time; Deborah Kerr, previously known for her plucky, lady-like roles, got to play an unabashedly sexual woman, and a married one at that; Donna Reed, cast against type as the prostitute with delusions of her own, gave the most honest and wrenching performance of her career; and Frank Sinatra, cast against all prevailing wisdom in Hollywood (and beating out Eli Wallach for the choicest supporting role in Hollywood that year), became a great actor overnight as the doomed Maggio.
No words could do justice to the film's most famous scene: the nocturnal romantic rendezvous on the beach, with Burt Lancaster's and Deborah Kerr's bodies intertwining as the waves crash over them. If you're able to take your eyes off the principals for a moment or two, keep an eye out for George Reeves; his supporting role was shaved down when, during previews, audiences yelled 'There's Superman!' and began to laugh.
From Here to Eternity raised the bar for realism (and the genuine, jagged, if ugly side of life) in war movies, and in movies in general; winning eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and supporting awards to Sinatra and Reed." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

The killers 1946 - A complex film noir tale of obsessive love and multiple double-crosses

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: Robert Siodmak
Main Cast: Burt Lancasteer, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker

"The Killers uses Ernest Hemingway's short story as a springboard for a complex film noir. Two mysterious men (William Conrad and Charles McGraw) muscle their way into a small town and kill an aging boxer (Burt Lancaster, making his screen debut), who offers no resistance and seems to be welcoming his death. An insurance investigator (Edmond O'Brien) is hired to locate the beneficiary to Lancaster's policy, and in the course of his investigation reopens a long-dormant robbery case. In a series of flashbacks, O'Brien makes the connection between Lancaster and the robbery and tracks down the 'brains' behind the operation. He also comes in contact with Lancaster's former girlfriend (Ava Gardner), whose duplicity played a big part in Lancaster's demise - and his indifferent reaction to it.
Siodmak's hard-edged, moody direction of the Oscar-nominated screenplay by Anthony Veiller, makes The Killers one of the definitive films noirs, including what is considered to be one of the greatest opening sequences in movie history. Stylishly shot, particularly in the opening night-for-night and sustained heist sequences, the film builds suspense through the deliberate accretion of details about a foregone conclusion. Lancaster's film debut as the physically imposing but psychologically devastated Swede made him a star, while Gardner's poisonously beautiful siren turned her into a love goddess on a par with Rita Hayworth. A critical and box office success, The Killers received Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links: