THE BIG KNIFE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 17

THE BIG KNIFE

(Associates and Aldrich-United Artists) QTHER things being equal, one of the livelier pleasures of filmgoing for me is the stimulus I get from encountering new faces, er new combinations and permutations of familiar ones. Other things aren’t quite equal, as it happens, in The Big Knife. The background music-strident, dissonant, and for the most part superfluous-is not the equal of any other element in the show. The casting isn’t everywhere equa] to the players, the players aren’t all equal to the dialogue (by James Poe out of Clifford Odets), and the situation at times just couldn’t cope-or so it seemed to me---with the unique contours of the Jack Palance profile. But I watched every foot of the film with a lively interest, and if there were times when I laughed at the wrong moments I must confess that I enjoyed myself thoroughly. All the same, I can’t quite understand why this production should have gained the Silver Lion award at last year’s Venice film festival. It has too many minor flaws to be considered a first-class film. There is too much overplayed emotionalism, even for a movie set in Hollywood; there is a similar lack of restraint in the photography at times-notably in the final sequences--and there are passages near the beginning where the speech-level is too low for clarity. It could be, of course, that 1955 was not a vintage year; though I seem to remember it as fair enough. On the other hand, the Silver Lion may have been given as an award for valour, for The Big Knife-which is certainly the year’s outstanding example of un-Holly-wood activity-could well be two-edged. I don’t find it surprising that it should have been made by an independent group. I am impressed that it should have been made at all, for the big studies (who control such a large segment of the labour market, and who look on the preservation of the proprieties as the cornerstone of public relations) are bound to regard it as strong poison, and Mr. Aldrich and his associates as little better than a band of subversive devia- * tlonists, For The Big Knife is not a pleasant picture of Hollywood. Charlie Castle (Palence) is a film-star who hes been something of a good-time Charlie and is now suffering from "peritonitis of the soul"-Mr. Odets’s phrase for eroded idealism, His wife (Ida Lupino) favours surgery--cut loose from Hollywood and a0 East She and the child will if he

won't. The studio (represented by a paranoid producer, Rod Steiger, and his hatchet man Wendell Corey) is equally determined to force him to sign a new seven-year contract--or hand him over to the police for a fatal hit-and-run accident he was involved in. Finally Charlie performs the surgery himself, though somewhat messily and melodramatically. Mind you, these are but the bare bones-there’s a good deal of sub-plot complication, but that’s the central conflict, Ida Lupino overplays her part and there are points in the film where she seems to have infected Palance in the same way. The really good performances are those of the supporting playersRod Steiger’s bravura portrayal of the producer is a corrosive piece of satire; Corey, the toad-cold trquble-shooter, will Me you a genuine chill, and Shelley inters (as the bit player who can't hope to become more than an item on someone’s expense account) again proves herself much more than the conventional movie blonde, Jean Hagan, Everett Sloane, Ilka Chase, Wesley Adcy-in-frequently seen players-are all on top of their form. If The Big Knife isn’t great cinema it’s not for want of trying, and though I feel that, more than anything else, it dulled its edge on Palance’s neanderthal profile I would still confidently recommend it to anyone who liked to watch actors at work, Robert Aldrich produced and directed. (Not for juveniles.)