Sweet Smell Reaction

I was fascinated by the reaction of my Writing About the Movies class to Sweet Smell of Success, which we saw this week. There's this scene where Tony Curtis' character, Sidney Falco, tries to pressure a cigarette girl, who's in a jam, to sleep with a sleazy newspaper columnist as a way of getting out of that jam. The students were  audibly offended, or even revolted, by Sidney's tactics. The reaction had an astonishing, real-world vibe to it, as if some of the students were aware of similar situations. In any case, that sequence really struck a nerve. I'll never see the film in quite the same way again.