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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 57825
Released: October 15, 2002 |
| Our Price: $6.07 |
| Used Price: $4.99 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Academy Award® winners* Jack Palance, Rod Steiger and Shelley Winters deliver knockout performances in this vicious "poison-pen letter to the movie business" (American Cinematheque)that's an extreme close-up of greed, lust and murder! Hollywood superstar Charlie Castle (Palance) has it all except a way out. When he tries to leave show business, his tyrannical studio boss Stanley Hoff (Steiger) blackmails him with a lethal, covered-up secret that could land him in jail. A loose-lipped starlet (Winters) also knows too much, and when she starts talking, Hoff plans murder. Now Charlie is more cornered than everon the brink of losing his wealth, his power and his soul. *Palance: Supporting Actor, City Slickers (1991); Steiger: Actor, In the Heat of the Night (1967); Winters: Supporting Actress, A Patch of Blue (1965), Supporting Actress, The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
Description of The Big Knife:
After 1952's The Bad and the Beautiful skewered Hollywood with a scathing attempt at self-analysis, The Big Knife (1955) finished the job of exposing the slimy underbelly of the studio system. This high-gloss noir, cynical to the bone and altogether hysterical in its potboiler theatrics, is a deliriously entertaining mid-'50s melodrama, adapted from the play by Clifford Odets (who brought a similar brand of vitriol to Sweet Smell of Success) and starring Jack Palance in a role that transcended his trademark villainy. Palance is quite effective as rising star Charlie Castle, whose continued ascension in Hollywood depends on his willingness to renew a contract with studio bully Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger), who treats Charlie like an indentured servant and, even worse, has plenty of dirt to hold against Charlie if he doesn't cooperate.
Trapped between stardom and a desperate desire to reconcile with his neglected wife (Ida Lupino), Charlie's facing a no-win scenario, haunted by the indiscretions of his past. Palance's overwrought performance is perfectly keyed to director Robert Aldrich's typically histrionic approach; he's eclipsed only by Steiger, whose Method madness has rarely been as outrageous as this (his character was partially based on studio honcho Jack Warner). Set primarily in the well-appointed den of Charlie's Bel-Air manse, The Big Knife is stagy but stylish, with Charlie's home taking on the appearance of a gilded cage as his predicament intensifies. Add a stellar supporting cast, and you've got film noir at its finest--dark souls baking in the California sun. --Jeff Shannon
The Big Knife Reviews:
Better than today's 
2009-10-15 - No matter how overdramatic, the acting blew me away. I had forgotten there were such good actors.
sticks in the heart of 50's hollywood 
2009-04-11 - excellent!five stars or more Rod Steiger is a souless monster, and most likely ruffle some feathers of real studio heads of that period he is so evil that its a fatting desert! and hedda hopper witch like character is to die for and Wendell corey performance is a knockout! it can too much at times but so what it was the fifties.
Campy but substantial.
2008-08-14 - Ok, ok, I know, this movie is campy, "over the top." But, still, it's a damn good movie.
It's serious, well-acted and other than the fact that he's a rat because sang to HUAC you've got to admit the screenwriter, Clifford Odets, does know how to write.
Note to any would-be Rich Little-wannabee ---- This is the movie to see if you want to perfect the definitive Rod Steiger impersonation. ("Ho-ho ho-ho! If you don't start reacting out there in the auidence, I'm gonna machine gun everyone of you. And-I'm-not-kidding. Oh-but-I-am-kidding Ho-ho-ho!")
The production values are not great. The direction is choppy. The style, as noted, is campy and and over-the-top. But give me 10 of these movies for 10,000 of today's so-called "blockbusters."
More of a filmed "Playhouse 90" production than a movie, see it, you won't be disappointed. ... Or else: ho-ho-ho, I'll machine gun every one of you.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
2007-07-09 - Who ever thought that Jack Palance could ever deliver an emotionally wrought performance at this stage in his career? He does just that. He gives such a performance that it is just heartbreaking to watch him. Jack Palance had more range than he was ever given credit for having. This is a brutally well scripted realistic film directed by Robert Aldrich. Wendell Corey also gives a rationally based, cold and detached, but curiously humane performance driven by the system and in too deep for his own good but his conscience reminds him that he really should know better. Perhaps all the characters actually do know better and know that there truly is no way out.
The Realist, the Philistine and the Idealist....You figure it out.
2007-06-13 - There is very much room for debate on The Big Knife. The casting of Palance and Steiger, good 'ol whinny Winters, the stage-related lack of locales, etc., etc. Each of these can be parsed to illuminate why the film works or doesn't. In a way that's a sign of a good film, one that has made bold choices, and risks it's essential qualities.
I liked it. The thing that stood out for me though, was the seeming-multiple-endings. About three times I felt an ending, only to have another character enter, another scene. This may be Odets the writer, or Aldrich the director.
In any case I loved Palance. I am a fan of his, and in a lead, a somewhat straight lead, his casting is inspired. I felt he was emotionally resonant, quickly rising and falling with the clipped Odets' poetics. I watched it last night on TCM, and Robert Osborne remarked in the opening that this was a film about "weird people, Hollywood types" (paraphrase). I think that poorly sells the story, limiting it's scope and personality. Palance as Charlie Castle is a wreck because of his life in Hollywood, sure, but he isn't weird for it. His close relationships with his trainer/masseur and his publicist, among others, highlights his isolation and need for loving contact. Which makes Ida Lupino, as his possibly-leaving wife Marion, and her dilemma such a good parallel to Charlie's wanting to leave Hollywood.
And Rod Steiger....Over the top? Yes. But it a beautiful thing to watch. I love his commanding physical presence, his melodramatic crying, his hand-wringing. It may be scene-chewing and distracting to some, but again, it works within the story and the character. His psychological make up is so apparent, especially when he fears Castle will strike him, how he crosses his arms and tucks in.
Ida Lupino, who looks like she could be Stockard Channing's mother, was strong and poised despite her rancorous life, and I appreciated her for it. Her character was winning because of the strength she debated having to exert. Again, a Hollywood consequence.
Character actors, one and all, Smiley, Connie, Shelley Winter's wonkie Dixie, Hank (who could be Grey Davis' father), Nat (his slapping of Stanley Hoff's glass was awesome) , they all embody the inherent lack of stability in Hollywood.
The message is clear, and the execution (pardon the pun), was dramatic and interesting.
