This film sniffs out the perverse reality behind the fantasy world of Broadway. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis turn in great performances in unlikely roles, Lancaster as the indomitable gossip columnist who needs the dirty low-down on his friends and enemies, Curtis as the ingratiating press agent who delivers it. Clifford Odets supplies vitriol to the script, and the film is a major triumph for cinematographer James Wong Howe, as Richard Koszarski has written: “Sweet Smell of Success, with its startling mixture of semi-documentary and high-gloss studio styles...makes full use of its New York locations in the approved ‘realistic' manner then still developing. But Howe manages to relight the nighttime city and transform it from a documentarist's grim vision to an evocative, sensuous, tinsel town.... We can...feel for ourselves just what sort of strange fascination it has for the characters, and how it compels their actions and governs their destinies.”