The Big Knife
Director: Robert Aldrich
Year Released: 1955
Rating: 2.5
An anti-Hollywood movie made by Hollywood (based on the play by Clifford Odets) - sounds perfect right? Not quite. A popular film star (Jack Palance), against better judgment, is coerced into signing a contract with a major studio (headed by blustery Rod Steiger); meanwhile, he's been having dalliances with other women, his wife (Ida Lupino) wants to leave him and he was involved in an accident that killed a person. In typical Odets style this is over-heated melodrama - Steiger is given free reign - that ends in suicide (the easy way out); the 'slashes' at the corruption of H-wood are barely paper-cuts.
