Introduction by Eddie Muller on Thursday, July 16. Screening followed by a book signing with Eddie Muller, featuring Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (Revised and Expanded Edition) and Dark City Dames: The Women Who Defined Film Noir (Revised and Expanded Edition), in partnership with Mysterious Bookshop.*

A box-office disaster upon original release, Sweet Smell of Success is now considered one of best films of the 1950s—as well as the definitive cinematic statement on the dangers of media corruption. Burt Lancaster seethes through a thinly-veiled portrait of powerful New York gossip columnist Walter Winchell as J.J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis gives perhaps his finest performance as the two-faced, sycophantic press agent Sidney Falco. Some of the most dyspeptic dialogue in screen history is spewed courtesy of writers Lehman and Odets, all complemented by James Wong Howe’s cinéma vérité camerawork and a brassy, propulsive score by Elmer Bernstein. Keep your eyes and ears open as put-upon jazz cat Martin Milner sits in with the legendary Chico Hamilton Quintet (Paul Horn, flute; Fred Katz, cello; John Pisano, guitar; Carson Smith, bass; Chico Hamilton, drums). Co-starring Susan Harrison, Emile Meyer, and Barbara Nichols (“What am I, a bowl of fruit? A tangerine that peels in a minute?”) J. J. Hunsecker said it best, “I love this dirty town!”

Preceded by the Looney Tunes animated short Rhapsody Rabbit.

*In partnership with The Mysterious Bookshop, NOIR CITY: NEW YORK will be hosting a book signing in the Paris Theater lobby on Thursday, July 16 at the 7 PM showtime of Sweet Smell of Success. Doors will open at 6:30 PM, with books by Eddie Muller available for purchase in the lobby. Eddie Muller will introduce the 7 PM screening of Sweet Smell of Success and book sales will be suspended at showtime. The queue for the post-screening signing will start at 8:45 PM, and book sales will recommence at that time, pending available inventory. The book signing is scheduled to start when the screening of Sweet Smell of Success ends.