Alexander Mackendrick’s jazzy 1957 drama resurrects a bygone era of celebrity gossip, where fingers were smudged with newsprint, and the souls of its practitioners were just as inky black. Burt Lancaster plays J.J. Hunsecker, a ruthless gossipmonger modeled after Walter Winchell, while Tony Curtis is a publicity man trying to worm his clients into Hunsecker’s column. It’s all a nasty bit of business, but so much fun – juicily scripted (by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman), expertly acted, and, in cinematographer James Wong Howe’s capable hands, gorgeous to look at. – Kimberley Jones
