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.

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.

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.

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

Well acted.