The Big Knife (1955)
(On TV, September 2020) Considering my fondness for Hollywood stories about Hollywood, I’m surprised that I don’t like The Big Knife as much as I probably should. The story of an actor negotiating a new contract with his studio while blackmailed due to a few sordid stories (both past and current) sounds like something right up my alley. It’s not as if the film doesn’t have other qualities either: Ida Lupino is wonderful as usual, Rod Steiger chews a lot of scenery, and Jack Palance is sort-of interesting. But in the end, it’s the entire film that fails to impress—perhaps too bleak for esoteric reasons (blame playwriter Clifford Odet, who wrote the theatrical play from which this is adapted), perhaps too stuck to the florid dialogue of the original, perhaps a bit too sedate and stage-bound as the theatrical play itself. I’m not sure there’s a crowd-pleasing movie to be made about an actor declining a wealth-making studio contract, and certainly not in the way the film ends. Too bad, because there are flashes of wit in the dialogue, and some fun performances—just not the kind of material that transforms a film into something compelling. In the end, I just could not make myself believe in The Big Knife.