So, you’ve survived the experience of watching the Safdie Brothers’ anxiety-inducing gambling thriller “Uncut Gems” without your heart exploding, eh? Admittedly, very few movies can match that film’s high-strung sense of mania and tension, but if you’re looking for a classic Hollywood flick that operates in a somewhat similar but lower key pitch, we have a recommendation.
Alexander Mackendrick’s “Sweet Smell of Success,” a noir drama from 1957, stars the great Burt Lancaster (“From Here to Eternity,” “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral“) as a powerful New York City gossip columnist whose daily articles are so powerful, they can make or break careers. Tony Curtis (“Some Like It Hot,” “The Defiant Ones”) plays a low-level press agent striving to graduate from being disrespected to become a big shot, and the story explores the lengths the agent will go — and the lives he may ruin — in order to please the writer so he can finally achieve the success he desires.
Uncut Gems and Sweet Smell of Success share a feeling of living on the edge
If you only knew Adam Sandler from goofy comedies like “Happy Gilmore” or “Grown Ups,” “Uncut Gems” showcases a totally different side to him as an actor — and even the Safdies were impressed by his commitment to the role. His character, a jeweler and gambling addict named Howard Ratner, spends the movie getting into increasingly deeper financial holes, and the filmmakers slowly turn up the heat until Howard (and by extension, the audience) feels like he’s trapped in a vat of boiling water. “Sweet Smell of Success” won’t give you the exact same type of heart palpitations as “Uncut Gems,” but for a film made nearly 70 years ago, it feels remarkably modern in its acid-tipped exploration of fame and power, and shares some thematic crossover even if the aesthetic and overall vibes are remarkably different.
Without spoiling too much, it’s fair to say that Tony Curtis’s character, Sidney, is full of the same kind of sweaty desperation as Howard. Long-held debts, owed favors, blackmail, threats, and intimidation hang in the air of both movies like a fog, as the shattered pieces of important relationships are run over by protagonists who have nearly lost their humanity in the pursuit of a financial windfall. The characters in these films are living on the edge, trapped in cycles that are unknowingly leading to their destruction. The movies also share an overall sense of scuzziness, the kind that makes you shudder at the notion that there could be people out there who are so nakedly covetous of power that they’ll betray the people closest to them to get one more chance at the big time.
One other thing the films have in common? Both were ignored by the Academy when the Oscars ceremony rolled around, but both seem to have gotten the last laugh; it’s only been a few years since “Uncut Gems” came out, but the movie’s frenetic pacing seared its way into the cultural consciousness, while “Sweet Smell of Success” did the same thing with its crackling dialogue and stunning cinematography.
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