Editor Reviews:

Description:
A powerful film about a ruthless journalist and an unscrupulous press agent who'll do anything to achieve success, this fascinating, compelling story (The Hollywood Reporter) crackles with 'taut direction and whiplash dialogue (Time). Bristling with vivid performances by Curtis and Lancaster, this gutsy exposÃ(c) of big-city corruption is a timeless classic that cuts deep and sends a chilling message. It's late at night in the steamy, neon-lit streets of New York's Times Square, and everything's buzzing with nervous energy. But press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is oblivious to the whirlwind of street vendors, call girls and con men bustling around him as he nervously waits for the early edition of The Globe. Whose career did gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) launch today...and whose did he destroy?

Amazon.com essential video:
A classic of the late 1950s, this film looks at the string-pulling behind-the-scenes action between desperate press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) and the ultimate power broker in that long-ago show-biz Manhattan: gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). Written by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets (who based the Hunsecker character on the similarly brutal and power-mad Walter Winchell), the film follows Falco's attempts to promote a client through Hunsecker's column--until he is forced to make a deal with the devil and help Hunsecker ruin a jazz musician who has the nerve to date Hunsecker's sister. Director Alexander MacKendrick and cinematographer James Wong Howe, shooting on location mostly at night, capture this New York demimonde in silky black and white, in which neon and shadows share a scarily symbiotic relationship--a near-match for the poisonous give-and-take between the edgy Curtis and the dismissive Lancaster. --Marshall Fine

Rating : - Holy Crap!!
I always sort of put off seeing this even though I've heard good things about it. I think it was because Tony Curtis is in it and the only thing I've ever seen him do were really bad introductions to some Alfred Hitchcock DVDs. In those introductions, Curtis fumbled his lines (which were often filled with errors) and so I assumed he was the worst actor in the world. I should kick myself.

This movie is not only one of the best "noir" films I've seen but one of the best movies I've ever seen PERIOD.

It's included in the noir category despite it not being a crime drama at all. The reason for this is it's shadow-filled cinematography and its theme of corruption. According to this movie, human beings are bleak, cold-hearted creatures.

It's about a Broadway columnist (played by Burt Lancaster in one of his best roles) who manipulates everyone he comes in contact with. He is one of the vilest, cold-hearted bastards I've ever seen in a movie because he's just so real. This isn't a noir hit-man in a fedora hat. This guy could be real and I'm sure some of us have met or will meet someone like him. Tony Curtis plays a bastard publicity agent though you sort of feel bad for him even despite his faults. He's the "protagonist" and we are told the story through his eyes. There are a couple of characters who have integrity and are not so corrupted but they only count as victims of the manipulation.

The acting is top-notch. Both Lancaster and Curtis had me in awe throughout the whole movie. Usually movies about "show business" don't interest me all that much but this movie was fascinating. This is dark look at NYC life in the 1950s. I recommend it with every noir-loving bone in my body.