Notable Cast: Jack
Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Jean Hagen, Rod Steiger, Shelley Winters,
Ilka Chase, Everett Sloane, Wesley Addy, Paul Langton, Nick Dennis, Michael
Winkelman, Strother Martin
“I’m a deductible item. They write me off in the books!”
Perhaps the biggest thing that plays against The Big Knife is that it was released the
same year as Robert Aldrich’s iconic film Kiss
Me Deadly. While the former is not nearly as strong as the latter, for some
reasons I’ll dig into here in a second, it’s not a film that should be as
forgotten from the cinephile mainstream as it has been with time. It’s flawed,
yes, but The Big Knife is also a film
that provides a rather cynical and vicious look into the dark side of 1950s
Hollywood ideals with its character study and dialogue focused framework that
shines in its small details. It’s a film that may not interest the more casual
film fan, but it’s a film that deserves to be viewed again with the brilliance
of hindsight and this Arrow Academy release provides the perfect setting to do
so. It’s one more moment where Arrow finds those hidden classics of cinema and
brings them back into the light and with a film like The Big Knife it just
might kick start a new found appreciation for a cult classic.