Clifford Odets, on whom the character Barton Fink was based (doesn't he look like him?!), was called in to polish the screenplay for "Sweet Smell of Success" following director Alexander MacKendrick's disappointment with the original screenplay. Odets had been mired in Hollywood by then, like Fink, and had even been blacklisted by McCarthy as a Communist. He was supposed to "doctor" the script in a couple of weeks, but he ended up taking months, completely redoing it, and he wasn't even finished by the time the movie started shooting in New York. From Wiki: Odets had to accompany the production to Manhattan and continued rewriting while they shot there. Returning to the city that had shunned him for going to Hollywood made him very neurotic and obsessed with all kinds of rituals as he worked at a furious pace with pages often going right from his typewriter to being shot the same day.Gosh, that does sound like Fink.
My question: Do you get any sense that the movie was actually thrown together in this way? My own view is that it doesn't show, but I'd like to hear what you think.
3 comments:
I didn't catch any ragged edges. I missed a few of the twists and turns, and I think that wasn't completely my fault, but it probably wouldn't have been helped by a rewrite.
I can see why Fink had a “Jewfro”.
Actually kc, I think maybe having the film shot as it was written was a strength. Sometimes film noir is done in by a very contrived plot twist based on an improbably elaborate scheme that one of the characters has. In this movie, it really does feel like Sidney and J.J. do all their scheming on the fly and in reaction to events as they unfold.
I didn’t notice any continuity problems or lurching back and forth in characterization. And the dialog was snappy and consistent. So I think they avoided the kind of problems you might expect from a movie “thrown together”.
Yeah, I think the frenetic feel of the film was probably aided by that on-the-fly aspect — and the crazy jazz.
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