Watch The Big Knife For Free

the audience applauded

good back-story, and good acting

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Robert Aldrich;s early work included Kiss Me Deadly, and Vera Cruz, as well as this Odets script starring jack Palance. Aldrich is a still undervalued director, creating disturbing neo noir minor masterpieces. In some ways this is too close to the theatre to be as good as Kiss Me Deadly (proving Spillane novels made better films than Odets plays)....but later work, including Ulzana's Raid and The Dirty Dozen redefined westerns and war films, though weren't recognized at the time. He created his own genre almost with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. But it is in the early films, such as this, that Aldrich's bare knuckled clarity was most evident. Also, its worth seeing just for Palance.

By coincidence, I saw Carnage, the new Polansky, shortly after this one. Polansky is a master of small spaces, and moving inside them, and making them part of the dramatic fabric of the film. Space as drama, as metaphor, that's one of the things that made me want to watch films seriously, one of the concepts dearer to me. Robert Aldrich is also a spatial man, a cinematic architect, who also considers and bends the space to take from it wherever he is making out of the material he is shooting. That's specially well done in Kiss me Deadly, a must-see on many levels, but also here in this smaller film. Here we have filmed theater, a one set film. The first problem is that the set is a little bit studio like, and thus is more contrived, giving Aldrich less possibilities for breaking the camera angles and camera moves. Shooting studio was norm, and had advantages, light control, etc, but the downfall proves bad for the kind of visual work that Aldrich liked to try. Well, it's a little bit like Palance's character, trapped inside his golden cage, living profitably at the expense of artistic compromise. But this film is still a worthy experience. The text helps. The inner tensions of Charles Castle, mapped into Jack Palance's own Method approach to acting. All that wrapped about the brilliant vision of Aldrich, supported by the also brilliant Laszlo, a fine cinematographer, we have such great films produced by his camera. This is a one space film, but also a one-man show. It's all about how the environment mirrors how Palance reacts to the world. In that sense this is a kind of noir, in how he only reacts to the adversities, a pawn in an odd world, where he is the odd center. But this is not noir in the wider sense, in the definition that Ted applies to it, which i embrace. Ida Lupino was a clever artist, and she knows enough to support Palance's act. She really helps. We tolerate Steiger's excesses because his character is not too much exposed, but he does go over the top.Anyway, stick to the camera, how it reacts to Palance. The characters movements, what's usually defined as mise-en-scène, is remarkable in how it is reflected always in how the camera moves. This is something that started with Hitchcock's Rope. Sidney Lumet toped this game with his Angry Men, but this is a sensible use of the camera in that respect.My opinion: 3/5, a very pleasant minor work of a very fine director.http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

The Big Knife (1955)You always expect something edgy and a hair impolite with a Robert Aldrich film, from his over-the-top film noir cult classic "Detour" to the bizarre and gripping "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" It's almost as though his rich upbringing and rejection of a nice political life made him a fearless renegade. Give him credit. He cracked the Hollywood doldrums of the 1950s and early 60s like few other directors (Kubrick comes to mind as a big budget parallel). So you can get a lot out of "The Big Knife" in understanding Aldrich. And you can really enjoy a superb set of performances, mainly by Ida Lupino as the leading man's wife, and by Everett Sloan in an aging version of his usual submissive chumminess. Rod Steiger is there, powerful and a bit overacted, if you can overact in an Aldrich movie, and the headliner, Jack Palance, does his best at being a leading man, and is pretty fine, especially since his role is as a Hollywood actor with flaws.Throw in some really crisp cinematography by Ernest Lazlo, one of the best of his generation. Sometimes the camera will take on an angle that rocks you slightly, as when it is looking up from the floor at Palance on the massage table, with his agent towering overhead. More subtle is Lazlo's fluid long takes, or even fluid short takes, where the camera just makes sense of a scene not by framing it right (which is expected) but by moving it during the take. Once you notice it, you appreciate more and more how the interior of this house (the set for the whole movie) is made dimensional and alive.I say all this up front because the movie struggles against the story and writing despite all this. It's a play adapted to the screen, but rather literally, with the one main set for all the shooting. And it talks a lot. I don't see this working even on a stage, where you want and get dialog. Here it's almost deadening. Not that it quite is ever boring, but it tries too hard, and it pulls a couple of sensational twists out as it goes, with another sensational twist at the end. On top of all that is just a level of credibility. None of these Hollywood businessmen strike you as quite right, and what they say or do is all caricature.Not that we expect a movie, especially an Aldrich movie, to be believable. But there has to be some compensating excitement. This one, with a great noir title but no real noir qualities, never quite flies. It's worth watching if you like Lupino or Aldrich in particular, and it has moments of real intensity, but that might not be enough in the big picture.

Clifford Odets covers it all here, with some memorable performances by Ida Lupino, Rod Steiger, Wendell Corey as studio PR and bag man "Smiley Coy". Jack Palance as the principal character, a troubled leading man Charlie "Cas" Castle, who is trying to maintain vestiges of his ethics and values in a soul-less profession. Also a few good cameos with Shelley Winters as the scandal scapegoat, and an annoying histrionic performance with a drunk Jean Hagen attempting to seduce Palance.Lupino is Castle's estranged wife, who wants him back if he will not sell his soul to the studio. There are some memorable scenes with her as the grounded spouse, seeing Castle destroyed by the system, and trying to pull him out of the mire. Hollywood in those times was something not easily detached from, as Castle is a major star and studio head "Uncle Hoff". Rod Steiger excels here in that role as narcissistic tyrant Hof. His monologue regarding his wife, her illnesses and survival of the fittest in Hollywood is indelible, and rings true.Lupino and Steiger alone can dominate the scenery, as she glowers at him while he is lecturing Castle. While a bit talky at times, the subject of stardom and Hollywood of those times is intriguing. As Marilyn Monroe once said, ..."Hollywood is a town where they give you a million for your body and a nickel for your soul"... Classic. 9/10.