THE BIG KNIFE (USA/1955)

Robert Aldrich had just released the darkest film noir (Kiss Me Deadly) when he directed this independently produced film. It's not a noir at all, but a Hollywood-on-Hollywood tragedy faithfully based on a play by Clifford Odets. Many studio films set in Hollywood were released before (What Price Hollywood?, Sunset Blvd., In a Lonely Place, The Bad and the Beautiful) and after (The Barefoot Contessa, The Day of the Locust, The Legend of Lylah Clare). None of them serve as an indictment of the Hollywood star system and the dictatorial power of the men who run the studios quite like The Big Knife. All of it takes place in the large Beverly Hills living room of Charlie Castle (Jack Palance), a once-idealistic actor married to a woman (Ida Lupino) who loves him but has recently left him because of his philandering and his forced surrender to studio mogul Stanley Hoff. Gossip columnists, publicists, managers and studio honchos enter Castle's place as if they owned it. The Big Knife pulls no punches when showing how actors were turned into fetishistic commodities and manipulated during the Studio Era. Hoff is played by Rod Steiger as a composite character, with traits associated with Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn, and Jack Warner. Shelley Winters shines as a wounded wannabe starlet. Aldrich makes no attempt to soften the blow or to water down Odets' florid and poetic use of language. The jazzy score is a bit too punchy for my taste but it befits The Big Knife's angry and appalling mood.