The Big Knife

More like The Dull Knife. Am I right?

Overheated argument between Art and Mammon, with rather disagreeable people shouting at each other, for too long a time. Limited interest is provided by the acting.

Robert Aldrich directing an all-star cast in an adaptation of a play by Clifford Odets. How could it go wrong? I'll tell you how: loads of overripe dialogue which I have serious trouble believing worked any better on stage. The real dead giveaway is when Ida Lupino goes off on a mini-rant about film directors that "matter", and omits Alfred Hitchcock... since, after all, "everybody knows" that a man who does mere suspense films can't possibly be an artist. Long, silly, and hypocritical

The dialogue is nowhere near as crisp as SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, but it's largely the same set of characters working through a more advanced version of the same story. Great acting, very much in the style of its time.

With its camp level, it almost feels like Aldrich warming up for "The Legend of Lylah Clare", though its origins have tonier literary pretensions (THIS was an Odets stage play?). Pauline Kael: "It's paced too fast and pitched too high, immorality is attacked with almost obscene relish, the knife turns into a buzz saw. Maybe because of all these faults of taste, you can't take your eyes off it." And by the end, it's just plain weird.

I'm starting to think that Aldrich didn't like the studio system very much. Palance's performance is raw and beautiful

Well directed and very well acted. But with its single location, it's too much a filmed play. And more importantly it goes for big melodramatic emotions at times which don't seem to fit the characters.

Ano de Centenário de Robert Aldrich #1 e Ida Lupino #4 (atriz). Apesar de ter um enquadramentos soberbos, a estrutura teatral foi pessimamente adaptada para a linguagem cinematográfica em termos narrativos, tudo ficou um tanto convulsionado se comparado a outras peças que foram parar no cinema e que sofreram menos na tranposição, talvez o próprio texto do Odets não ajude, mas há um pouco de culpa também do Aldrich por ter deixado a ambientação tão engessada. HDTVRip no MakingOff.

Boring and weirdly amusing.

Excellent writing and excellent performances should make for an excellent film, but there's something not quite right. It's still very good, mind you, but the tone is just a little off, a bit too melodramatic for the characterizations we're given and too much lull between the wonderful confrontations.

It's pretty stagey, and having 90% of the film take place in the same living room gets a bit tiring, but I enjoyed the overall experience. Cynical, filled with threats, betrayals, anguish, infidelity and death. Or as I like to call it, just another tuesday evening.

This movie starts off with a lot of promise: a dynamite, evocative Saul Bass credit sequence and a terrific. Unfortunately, it doesn't really make good on that promise until the third act. The rest of it is a lot of stage-bound exposition and overblown melodrama. Although a scathing indictment of the film industry, it missteps in trying to get us to care too much about an actor's career. The script has some excellent lines, though, and the performances are all pretty good.

Too talky and preachy and overwrought--the stage origin shows--but Palance, Lupino and Steiger are very, very good and Shelly Winters and Wendell Corey are at their best.

Well acted.