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The Big Knife

The Big Knife

1955
Drama
1h 51m
At the insistence of his idealistic wife (Ida Lupino), philandering Hollywood actor Charlie Castle (Jack Palance) resists signing another seven-year contract with studio boss Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger) -- but when Hoff and his assistant (Wendell Corey) threaten to reveal Charlie's part in a hit-and-run accident the previous year, he must reconsider his options. (filmfanatic.org)
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The Big Knife

1955
Drama
1h 51m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 49.31% from 126 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(126)
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Rated 08 Jul 2008
40
23rd
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
Rated 09 Apr 2009
25
43rd
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.
Rated 08 Aug 2013
50
13th
More like The Dull Knife. Am I right?
Rated 11 Dec 2009
71
50th
Well acted.
Rated 30 Jan 2010
84
60th
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.
Rated 03 Apr 2010
66
28th
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.
Rated 24 Feb 2012
73
64th
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.
Rated 05 Nov 2012
82
67th
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.
Rated 24 Apr 2015
62
11th
Boring and weirdly amusing.
Rated 07 Jan 2018
66
40th
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.
Rated 16 Jun 2019
70
43rd
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.
Rated 29 Mar 2020
79
74th
I'm starting to think that Aldrich didn't like the studio system very much. Palance's performance is raw and beautiful
Rated 25 Sep 2020
57
52nd
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.
Rated 12 Aug 2022
52
56th
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.

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