Save your money for something good and enjoyable

One of my all time favorites.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Charles Castle (a seriously miscast Jack Palance) is a matinée idol who hates the films he makes and wants out. His wife Marion (Ida Lupino) loves him but feels she has to leave him. The powerful studio head Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger) wants him to sign a new 7 year contract...but Charles doesn't want to. However Hoff has something on Charles...It has a good script but it's all mostly talk and little action. Also there are way too many characters and plot lines all over the place. Also the film is terribly dated. Hollywood being shown as a cold, evil place many have been revolutionary in 1955 but it's old hat today. Worst of all is that Palance is totally miscast as a matinée idol. He just doesn't have the looks! On the plus side all the acting is great. Palance may not have the looks but his acting can't be faulted. Lupino does wonders with her limited role. Steiger EXPLODES amusingly as the evil studio head. Also Jean Hagen and Shelley Winters are good in small roles. Can't say I liked it but I'm not sorry I saw it.

The Big Knife is not for everybody. Some will find it very literate, well-directed and acted(mostly), handling the tense and satire aspects deftly, while others will find it overdone. Both viewpoints are completely understandable, for me there were parts where the film did fall into the latter camp but most of the time it was the former.As an adaptation of the stage play, which is very compelling and thought-provoking, it is very faithful and translates well adaptation-wise. As a film, it's far from perfect but it comes over well as a film.There are a few things that don't come off quite as successfully as the rest of the film. Rod Steiger has a very ruthless character, but for my tastes Steiger plays the role too broadly to the point that Hoff felt more of a cartoonish caricature than a real person, to the extent that it came close to hurting the balance of the film and he didn't come over as very threatening. In his performance, there is a lot of camp and scenery-chewing, but not enough of the menace that the role so ruthlessly written needs. The ending does dissolve into contrived melodrama, which is where it is most understandable as to why some will find the film overdone, and felt rushed as well. Lastly, the film does feel over-scored in places, in the places where there is music the blaring music cues felt intrusive.With the exception of Steiger, the performances are very good. Jack Palance's powerhouse lead performance is one of his best, while Ida Lupino is heart-wrenching and dignified. Wendall Corey wisely underplays and is very entertaining, and Everett Sloane, Jean Hagen(chilling in a role so different to hers in Singin' In the Rain) and a memorable Shelley Winters(in a performance that hits hard) do equally pleasingly. The script is remarkably literate and intelligent, with the tension being portrayed quite realistically and the satire being boldly lacerating. The story moves deliberately, but the tension present is enough to haunt the mind and the subject matter is a bold one and told in a biting, sometimes fun and poignant way. The Big Knife is photographed with class and atmosphere, the production values are appropriately claustrophobic and Robert Aldrich's direction is more than able, often excellent.Overall, a very acquired taste, but for this viewer while not without flaws it was a well done film. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Dull and boring. A movie about the movie making world and what they will do to cover up scandals among their best actors.I found the drama about the actor's marriage far too scattered and uninteresting. This film is supposed to show that some studio owners were evil greedy men making their stars produce garbage meaningless movies for money--using corrupted directors (gee what a surprise!). Also that this unfufilling career (producing kitch) leads to infidelity and marriage problems and robs the souls of the poor actors.Personally I would rather watch 99 River Street any day than this boring thing--all the studios would have gone bankrupt if they only produced these pseudo-intellectual masterpieces of boredom. An ugly now very dated looking French painting is supposed to symbolize the studio owners and of course the high culture and intelligence of the actor or rather his wife who bought it. PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALITY DEFINED.It drags it goes no where. It is talky with endless unemotive dialogue--in fact the scream when his wife finds his body--is the first non droning dialogue you hear--it made me jump. Shelley Winters is the most memorable actor for her short part where she is hopelessly dense and annoying.Watch things like 77 River Street...that is entertainment when things try to become too meaningful or artsy they flop..Several reviews say they let the actors control this entire movie allowing too much hamming and over-rehearsed stops (scenes).One last thing the tinny jazz soundtrack for this thing it was so bad it became irritating.DO NOT RECOMMEND

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.