The Big Knife Details

The Big Knife

This drama of Hollywood corruption, which has resonances with many other films, The Godfather included, has a strong cast and contains some fine acting. However, it betrays its stage origin (as a play by Clifford Odets) by being almost entirely set-bound and devoid of physical action. Powerful menace emanates not from Jack Palance as we might have expected but from Rod Steiger as a ruthless producer. Palance puts in a convincing performance as the main character, Charles Castle, an actor who has reached a crisis point in his career, yet the more we get to know about Castle, who comes across as hapless and weak, the harder it becomes to empathize with him.

[Highly rated reviewer]

The Big Meh

After the mad excesses of 'Kiss Me Deadly', director Robert Aldrich makes a heavy hand of Clifford Odets' then-blistering play about Hollywood. Jack Palance plays an actor drowning in self-loathing who's caught betweeen the voice of reason (the wife, drippily played by Ida Lupino) and ambition (the studio head, a galvanizingly boisterous turn from Rod Steiger, the best thing in the film). No attempt is made to hide its stage origins, so ultimately this ends up as being like a particularly shouty and overwrought trip to the theatre.