THE BIG KNIFE (1955) B/W widescreen 113m dir: Robert Aldrich

w/Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Shelley Winters, Rod Steiger, Jean Hagen

A Hollywood star (Palance) tries to break with a grasping producer (Steiger).

From Georges Sadoul's Dictionary of Films : "'My producer is a combination of Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner and Harry Cohn,' Robert Aldrich has said. 'Its theme is how, no matter what the environment, whether in arts or business, the natural freedom of man, his possibility for self-expression is being hampered by amoral, tyrannical bosses. At the same time, the film is directed against certain typical Hollywood characters.' The three-act play [by Clifford Odets], which Aldrich adapted cinematically, is ultimately a polemic against Hollywood, its gossip columnists, press agents, unscrupulous producers, and stars --- stars who are victims of their own fame, of the big knife, the system that killed Marilyn Monroe .... None of the Hollywood characters portrayed are reduced to a formula and Hoff, the producer, is a very complex personality, an all-too-human monster. Luxurious sets contribute to the oppressive atmosphere in which Jack Palance is a kind of Frankenstein's monster hunted down and destroyed by his creator."