Canted shots of Bel Air mansions open this fable of an actor’s indenture to a crooked studio chief. Exercised, massaged, and attended to by a swarm of keepers and parasites, Jack Palance’s beaten-down star, Charles Castle, is a prized animal penned in a sunken living room. When he is blackmailed into extending his contract with movie monarch Stanley Hoff (a chilled yet sweaty Rod Steiger), Castle’s castle closes in on him further, with paintings and lampshades looming in the frame like ghosts of the art he abandoned for fame. Despite his wife’s (Ida Lupino) attempts to rescue their marriage and the vestiges of his integrity, Castle (né Cass) sinks inexorably into the plush of his disillusionment. An anti-industry noir-odrama—and the first film produced by the independent Associates & Aldrich company—The Big Knife cut Hollywood to the quick, and fans responded in kind. The box office was not boffo.

—Lucy Laird

• Written by James Poe, from the play by Clifford Odets. Photographed by Ernest Laszlo. With Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Rod Steiger, Jean Hagen. (110 mins, B&W, 35mm, From MGM)