Alexander Mackendrick - The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Sweet Smell Of Success is one of the nastiest films ever made and I can't think of a higher recommendation than that. A cruel, devastatingly witty satire on fame, celebrity and scandal, it begins as a pitch-black comedy and ends up as something even darker and infinitely more powerful.



Sweet Smell of Success, one of the best and last true film noir works, is one of the greatest of all films. Clearly, it’s script (By Ernest Lehman & the great American playwright Clifford Odets) posses some of the sharpest dialogue ever written, and even if it’s not exactly naturalistic, it’s stylized in the best sense. The film takes place in a late-night New York, in which words can easily kill a man’s reputation, so it makes sense that the inhabitants of this world possess almost inhumanly quick wits. The film’s villain, J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), is a thinly veiled caricature of real-life gossip columnist Walter Winchell, and his power seems absolute. Everyone is aware that he is not afraid to administer it mercilessly either, and as a result, he manages to build a sense of menace before he even appears on the screen. When he finally does appear, in a scene set at Twenty One (which still looks identical today), one gets the impression that nothing his physical presence changes nothing. He was presiding over the film’s events all along. Lancaster’s a physically big guy, and embodies Hunsecker’s overbearing persona perfectly. Even better in the film, though, is Tony Curtis who plays Sidney Falco, a sleazy, yet somewhat successful talent publicist. Curtis generally possesses a nervous energy in his work, and it’s often distracting, but here that energy genuinely invigorates the film. You get the impression that Falco’s pathetic scrambling for whatever table scraps the fat cat Hunsecker lets him have is borne from a combination of jealousy, self-loathing, and maybe even sexual attraction.



The relationship between Falco and Hunsecker comprises the bulk of the film, but it takes the time to establish a whole food chain of lowlifes as they try scandalizing each other. You feel that everyone here, even Hunsecker, is expendable. If he were to fall from grace, there’s little hope that the game would be run any differently by his successor. That the film blames the world instead of the villain for the way things are is what places it firmly in the noir tradition, as well as the ammunition for much of the palpable satiric bite that the film packs. It also makes Hunsecker a thoroughly complex villain. The film never overtly says it, but Hunsecker is so overprotective of his sister that incestuous implications wouldn’t surprise. Clearly, the world of the gossip columnists has an incestuous, symbiotic element to it. Hunsecker rankles his nose when Falco suggests he needs publicists like himself in order to get material for his column, but Falco is right, to a degree. What Falco is neglecting though, is his own disposability, and that’s his biggest character flaw.





The film thankfully never descends into becoming a full-fledged crime flick. When the film begins, you get the impression that Hunsecker will end up dead or disgraced by the story’s end. He doesn’t. Aside from a roughing-up or two, the biggest crime in this film is slander. Most of the immorality on display is murkier that in other film noir works. It might not be specifically illegal, but it is clearly wrong, and as such it cuts closer to home for viewers that don’t plot insurance scams or aren’t gumshoes. That uncomfortable relevance makes the film stick with the viewer. The film was reportedly a financial flop upon its release and has only recently been reappraised as a classic. Frankly, I find Sweet Smell of Success’ evisceration of Winchell is far more pungent, relevant, and entertaining than Orson Welles’ Hearst bashing in Citizen Kane.

**** Masterpiece -- Movie Martyr

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no pass

Alexander Mackendrick - Whisky Galore! (1949)

PLOT:When a Scottish island falls prey to a whisky shortage, the islanders are desolate. But when by chance a ship is sunk with a cargo of 50,000 cases of whisky, they see their salvation. But first they must outwit the English Home Guard commander who is determined to protect the cargo at all costs.



The BFI's Screen Online writes: Whisky Galore! was the second of three films released in 1949 - the others were Passport to Pimlico (d. Henry Cornelius) and Kind Hearts and Coronets (d. Robert Hamer) - which forever linked 'Ealing' and 'comedy' in the public imagination. It also marked the directorial debut of Alexander Mackendrick, previously a screenwriter and storyboard artist on several Ealing films.



Whisky Galore! was adapted by Compton Mackenzie and Angus MacPhail from Mackenzie's novel, itself based on the true story of a famous incident in 1941, in which the SS Politician - whose cargo included 22,000 cases of whisky - was wrecked near the Hebridean islands of Eriskay and South Uist. Dozens of boats from every nearby island soon set upon the wreck, rescuing some 7,000 cases from a watery end.

The novel, and Mackendrick's film, relocates the story to the fictional island of Todday, and is not only a celebration of the islanders' single-mindedness, but a homage to the restorative powers of Scotch, which magically restores a community in deep depression for want of a 'wee dram'. Producer Monja Danischewsky called the film "the longest unsponsored advertisement ever to reach cinema screens the world over."



Despite a difficult production beset by often appalling weather, and a slow start at the English box-office, it became a worldwide hit and Ealing's most profitable film. It is also one of its most fondly remembered, particularly in Scotland. Its success owes much to its remarkable feeling of authenticity: with the exception of Basil Radford and Joan Greenwood most of the cast were Scots, with the extras coming from among the islanders of Barra where much of it was filmed. The constant attentions of the islanders helped the cast to perfect their accents.

Unlike the gentle comedy of Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore!'s humour has an often cruel bite, most of it at the expense of the pompous English Home Guard commander, Waggett (Radford), whose efforts to frustrate the islanders' pursuit of whisky result only in his own undoing.

Waggett's qualities - innocent, decent, not too clever - would have chimed perfectly among the Burgundians of Passport to Pimlico (in which Radford also appeared). But it's exactly these qualities which mark him out as the victim of the wily Todday islanders. The hapless Waggett is comprehensively defeated, and his final humiliation absolute - even his wife bursts into laughter at his fate.



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no pass

Alexander Mackendrick - The Ladykillers (1955)

The Ladykillers
YOU may recall it was the innocence of schoolgirls in buying solid gold statuettes that started the undoing of Alec Guinness and his criminal partners in "The Lavender Hill Mob." And it is likewise the innocence of a nice old widow that confounds Mr. Guinness and some bandit friends in his latest frolic in crime, "The Ladykillers," which opened at the Sutton last night.

Somehow, the obstacle of goodness in the guise of conventionality is always getting in the way of Mr. Guinness when he undertakes to play a jocular rogue. Nice people and their respectable ways of living continue to confuse his wicked plans and baffle his waggish companions. It is frustrating--but it is fun.

In this particular picture, which was given a gala première for the benefit of the Union Settlement of New York City, it is the indignation and dismay of a little old lady who has been innocently caught up in a mammoth London robbery engineered by Mr. Guinness as a master-mind criminal that knocks the whole enterprise askew. And it is the primness of this righteous little creature that puts his arch companions to fatal shame.

Mr. Guinness, got up with monstrous buck teeth and eyes sunk darkly in his head, is perhaps the most farcically fiendish character he has ever played. He has the unctuous and wicked personality of Captain Hook in "Peter Pan," the hollow and angular appearance of that other great British comic, Alastair Sim. In his long, flapping coat and wayward muffler, he would seem an invincible rogue. But the little old lady defeats him. And that is the substance of the joke.

"Simply try for one hour to behave like gentlemen," she commands Mr. Guinness and his four companions when she catches them trying to make away with the banknotes picked up in the robbery, just as she has tea-time guests coming in. "These (meaning the guests) are some of my oldest and closest friends."

Of course, the embarrassed bandits sit down and try to obey. That is the sort of whimsey William Rose has written for this film.

Perhaps it is slightly labored. Perhaps it does have the air of an initially brilliant inspiration that has not worked out as easily as it seemed it should. Still and all, Mr. Rose's nimble writing and Alexander Mackendrick's directing skill have managed to assure "The Ladykillers" of a distinct and fetching comic quality.

And, in addition to Mr. Guinness, it boasts a performer who does one of the nicest bits of character acting you could ask for at any time. She is the 77-year-old Katie Johnson, who plays the old lady into whose home Mr. Guinness and his string ensemble of bandits intrude themselves before--and after—they pull their stunt.

Miss Johnson, gentle and proper, yet upright and stubborn as a mule, makes a beautiful English rock of ages, against which the comical villains lash themselves to foam.

Assisting Mr. Guinness in his robbery are Cecil Parker as a timid, toffish type; Herbert Lom as a dark, impetuous gangster; Peter Sellers as a youthful rogue, and Danny Green as a thick-headed bruiser who is soon calling the old lady "Mum."

Michael Balcon's production in color gives the whole thing a slightly garish look that is not wholly consistent with the humor. But no matter—it's an easy, sprightly joke.
Bosely Crowther, NY Times, February 21, 1956




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English-Castellano (Dual)
no pass

Alexander Mackendrick - The Man in the White Suit (1951)

Alec Guinness Is 'Man in the White Suit,' a British Comic Satire at Sutton Theatre
There is every good reason why Alec Guinness should be the darling of the British Treasury and the toast of the London City (despite his forays in "The Lavender Hill Mob"). For certainly Mr. Guinness and the pictures in which he appears are the most amusing, if not the most profitable, exports from Britain these days. And now, in "The Man in the White Suit," which arrived last night at the Sutton, the popular actor also is providing a sobering lesson in national economy.

Sobering may not be the best word—or even the right one—to apply to this deft and sardonic little satire on the working of modern industry, and for letting it slip into the context, we quickly apologize. Although the subject is obviously serious and the moral may be a trifle sad, the prevalent spirit of the screenplay is mischievous, impudent and droll. And the performance of Mr. Guinness, as a textile chemist who collides head-on with vested interests when he invents an ever-wearing fabric, is in his most antic dead-pan style.

But there is no denying that the gantlet of comic mix-ups that Mr. Guinness runs, first in bootlegging his experiments in a succession of forbidden research labs and then in confronting the resistance of both management and labor when his miraculous invention has been made, provides a solemn reflection of the jitters of the economic state—or "the delicate balance of the market," to use a pretty and oftrepeated phrase. And in this demonstration, the picture does a strangely sobering job.

Of course, it is not all Mr. Guinness. The three gentlemen who wrote the script, one of whom was Alexander Mackendrick, the director, did a considerable bit. They concocted a most ingenious fable of the mischief that scientists can do with their test tubes and curiosity in disturbing the status quo. And Mr. Mackendrick, whose direction of "Tight Little Island" rang a bell, has even improved upon his technique of deft, dry comment with a camera in this film.

His sly and revealing observations of miserably nervous research hacks and hysterically agonized mill owners tearing themselves to shreds in the face of a major textile crisis are witty in the driest British vein. And his cunning employment of a jungle of bubbling retorts and glowing glass tubes, representing the apparatus of the wizard, makes for one of the screen's best running gags.

In the roles of conventional mill owners, Cecil Parker and Michael Gough give vastly amusing representations of stuffy confusion and bleak despair, and Ernest Thesiger is ridiculously didactic as an aged, titled textile tycoon. Joan Greenwood is charmingly caustic as a rebellious mercantile aristocrat and Vida Hope does a nice job of playing a rugged female trade unionist.

But, in the end, it is Mr. Guinness with his mild face and startled looks, his shy smiles and flying-bird gyrations, who keeps you fascinated and entertained in this slowly accelerating, quietly trenchant Michael Balcon film.

Also on the bill at the Sutton are three interesting and stimulating shorts—"Uncommon Clay," a hasty look-see at six American sculptors and their work; "Polka-graph," a film abstraction in color to a musical theme, and "Witch Doctor," a graphic recording of a Haitian voodoo dance.
Bosely Crowther, NY Times, April 1, 1952






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no pass