Martin Scorsese on the one film that inspired ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’
Over the years, Martin Scorsese has delivered a wide range of narratives that often portray masculine criminal dealings. With The Wolf of Wall Street, the American auteur essentially continued this vein of storytelling, only he ramped up the comic elements of the film right up and gave it a truly unique feel.
With Leonardo DiCaprio playing criminal stockbroker Jordan Belfort, telling of how he engaged in the corruption and fraud of the American finance world, The Wolf of Wall Street remains one of Scorsese’s best contributions to 21st-century cinema, a true classic of the comedy crime genre.
It’s always interesting to see where a given director gets their inspiration from for their particular movies. The great thing about Scorsese making his Letterboxd profile public is that he has a list in which he details the “companion pieces” to several of his best works, including The Wolf of Wall Street.
Like most of Scorsese’s films, The Wolf of Wall Street feels completely unique in its creative and narrative approach, but even such a remarkable work was inspired by at least one other piece of cinema. The legendary filmmaker admitted that when he was making the biopic, he had been influenced by the 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success.
“Pure lust for greed and power assumes an endless variety of forms. Here, in one of the best American films ever made, we’re in the cutthroat world of show business and big media, crossing paths with politics,” Scorsese wrote on his Letterboxd account. “Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster’s characters speak only the language of force and plunder—that’s all they know. There’s nothing else. As in our picture.”
The film noir drama movie was directed by Alexander Mackendrick and starred Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison and Martin Milner. Written by Clifford Odets, Mackendrick, and Ernest Lehman and based on a novelette by the latter, Sweet Smell of Success is a true classic of the 1950s.
It tells of a wealthy but sleazy newspaper writer, J.J. Hunsecker, who was based on Walter Winchell and played by Lancaster. Hunsecker uses his contacts from within the world of journalism to destroy the relationship his sister is having with a man whom Hunsecker believes is beneath her.
Sweet Smell of Success wasn’t received well upon its first release but has since grown in acclaim and stature. Martin Scorsese used the sleaziness and scheming ways of its protagonist in portraying the equally reprehensible yet likeable Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Check out the trailer for the film below.
