Il grande coltello

"The Big Knife" caused a sensation when it came out. After all, no one in his right mind would dare to criticize the movie industry, after all, it was the studio and its ruthless executives that were exposed as the bad guys, even at the time where the old studio system was disappearing.

Clifford Odets wrote the original play, which under Robert Aldrich direction doesn't translate to the screen because it feels claustrophobic in many aspects. The movie treatment was by James Poe, did not make the material come alive because of the theatricality of the source.

Charles Castle, an actor working in Hollywood, is about to commit himself to a renewal of his contract to a major studio. That means another seven years of his life working in whatever pictures the higher ups have in store for him. It couldn't come at a worse time; his wife, Marion, who evidently hasn't a good relation with Charles, is fed up with the idea of staying in Bel Air. Marion pleads with him to give up the movie business so they could have a normal life bringing up their young son.

Castle has had his share of adventures in Hollywood, something that Marion is aware of. In addition to that, he has a dark secret, something that involved a terrible accident for which his publicist has taken the blame and has even serve time in jail. A couple of women are also in the picture, threatening Charles' marriage.

To make matters worse, Charles is visited by the head of the studio, Stanley Hoff, who has brought his assistant, the oily Smiley Coy, to help him convince Castle to sign the contract. Charles Castle is finally defeated at the game as Stanley plays his cards right since he has the upper hand. The result is a bitter loss for the actor, who sees no way out of the situation at hand.

Jack Palance, who, up to this film, had only minor parts, rose to the challenge of playing Charles Castle, who in a way, he had the background, having been a boxer, to play. His work, although a bit unsure, was a revelation to the movie going public at the time. Ida Lupino, an excellent actress, is probably the best thing in the picture. Rod Steiger shows up as the studio head Stanley Hoff, a man that knows well his opponent's weaknesses and uses all in his power to get his way. Wendell Corey, in a small part, also does good work. Jean Hagen and Shelley Winters also contribute to the film.

Ernest Lazlo's cinematography works well, as does the musical score by Frank DeVol. Robert Aldrich, a man with a lot of experience in the business, was a natural choice to undertake the direction of this picture. His only problem was a basic one, how to open the play to cinematic terms.

Too talky for some, too stage-bound for others, too strident for all, this is not a movie for everyone. Yet The Big Knife continues to fascinate at the same time it annoys. Maybe it's the savage depiction of Hollywood politics and the amoral glamour industry surrounding it. After all, neither blackmail nor murder is off-limits to ego-maniacal studio boss Stanley Hoff ( vintage Rod Steiger), while the human sharks swimming around him behave nothing like opening night at the Oscars. Maybe it's the sterling cast, featuring such 50's exotica as Steiger, Jack Palance, Wendell Corey, and Shelley Winters. In the end, of course, everyone gets to explode on screen except the ice cold Corey whose chronic bemusement proves ultimately more satanic than cynical. Whatever the reason, the result is an over-the-top cavalcade of unusual flair.

It's likely that producer-director Robert Aldrich targeted the film in behalf of blacklisted mentor Abraham Polonsky with whom he had collaborated on 1948's Force of Evil. After all, the year was 1955 and the all-powerful list could not be attacked directly, so what better vehicle than Clifford Odet's corrosive stage play adapted for all America to see. (Odets would do the same for Broadway in 1957's revealing Sweet Smell of Success.) It's fun to imagine how Aldrich's resulting indictment played in studio screening rooms where real reputations were at stake. Then too, much of the film's dirty laundry appears based on fact. The hit and run on Clark Gable's hushed-up 1933 episode; the Palance character on John Garfield's death at 39, listed officially as heart attack. It's hard to picture the producers ever believing such curdled fare would actually make money. Of course it didn't, angering many ticket-buyers with a title that seemed to imply real action instead of endless palaver. Still, this overheated exercise in shameless baroque remains an interesting oddity. A permanent record not only of individual styles, but of artistic protest amidst the throes of cultural repression.

Unless you understand that The Big Knife was Clifford Odets's one finger salute to Hollywood and its mores, you will not understand the film at all. Odets after some bad times in tinseltown went back to his first love which was the theater and wrote this play which ran for 109 performances in the 1949 season on Broadway.

In the lead roles of actor Charlie Castle and producer Marcus Hoff, Odets cast a couple of guys who were having difficulty finding employment in Hollywood at that time as well, kindred spirits from the Group Theater back in the day, John Garfield and J. Edward Bromberg. Garfield who certainly could bring his own life into the part plays Odets himself who had as tempestuous personal life as his creation Charlie Castle. He feels starved creatively because of the junk he's been doing in Hollywood, not the stuff of social significance that Odets did back Group Theater days.

Jack Palance plays Castle in the film and while he does justice to the part I only wish John Garfield had lived to do the screen version of what he created. He had an unceasing rebellion against Warner Brothers for the stereotypical tough guys parts he was being cast in. But just after he broke free came the blacklist.

Rod Steiger is malevolence itself as the producer whom I believe was based on Louis B. Mayer. Odets dealt with him through his then wife Luise Rainer over at MGM. Mayer was not liked even by his fellow studio moguls and he had been toppled in a studio power play at MGM a few years earlier. Had he still been in charge at MGM, I'm willing to bet The Big Knife might never have been made even as an independent film with a United Artists release.

Director Robert Aldrich filled out the rest of the cast with familiar Hollywood names like Ida Lupino as Palance's estranged wife, Everett Sloane as his long suffering agent, Wendell Corey in a role that has to be modeled on MGM's fixer who knew where all the bodies were buried Eddie Mannix, Shelley Winters as the bimbo like starlet who can put an end to Palance's career and Ilka Chase as a Hedda Hopper like columnist who is the self appointed keeper of the Hollywood morals. Chase's scenes are at the beginning of the film and she really has the columnist character dead on.

On stage the entire play is set in the living room of the Palance/Lupino Hollywood style mansion. Like the house in Long Day's Journey Into Night, the opulent living room becomes a character itself, showing the velvet and comfortable trap that Palance is in and why he just can't give up all this comfort, even for the art that used to motivate him.

Odets might have done better had someone else a little more dispassionate had written this based on his memoirs. The Big Knife gets a little too personal at times. And it never quite loses the stage origin even with a few scenes away from the house. But the acting his first rate from a first rate cast. I'd watch The Big Knife as a look into the mind of Clifford Odets.

Bel Air. The well-manicured area of LA where the successful actors, producers and directors in Hollywood live. So says the opening voice- over.

Jack Palance, not the obvious choice for a leading man (& director Robert Aldrich's lame excuse for the film's box office failure) has never been better, nor has he had such a meaty role. His portrayal of pent-up anger and frustration is powerful yet still believable.

He's the washed up star who's unravelling at the seams, wrestling with a dark secret and Rod Steiger, complete with blonde hairdo as his studio manager who is out to keep a lid on bad publicity at all costs. He will stop at nothing at getting a new contract signed.

Ida Lupino is also extremely fine as Charles Castle's (Palance) wife. Their marriage is on the rocks and she pleads that Charles takes the rest that he desperately needs and to not sign. She won't go back to him otherwise. There's good support from tease Shelley Winters and as Charles' agent, Everett Sloane plus Wendell Corey as a ruthless producer.

Much of the action takes place in the Castle's vast living room, nodding to the theatrics of the original play by Clifford Odets.

This is a slow-burning, quite talky, intelligent character-led and well scripted study of Hollywood's mechanics - its layers of people. Not as flashy or melodramatic as some and certainly not as well known, but still directed with surety and skill. Today's viewer will have to adjust to the pace and style but that's easy and the rewards to those attuned can be high.

There's enough depth to the material for a second viewing, which helps bring out the characters even more vividly.

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.