The Big Knife is adapted from a play by Clifford Odets which had some success on Broadway, and which Jean Renoir plans to bring to the Paris stage. […] We may well wonder if it is interesting to make films out of plays, especially, as in this case, if the director doesn’t allow himself to adapt them freely. I believe it’s natural for a filmmaker, fascinated by the technique of his own art as well as possessing ex­perience in the theater, to be tempted to stamp and embellish a play with a certain literary quality, shaping it by using the endless possibilities of cinematic editing. […] With his lyricism, his modernity, his contempt for the slightest vulgarity, his desire to universalize and stylize the sub­jects he treats, Aldrich’s effects remind us constantly of Jean Cocteau and Or­son Welles, whose films he cannot have missed seeing. The action of The Big Knife is moved for­ward not by the interplay of emotions or of actions, but only – and this is both rare and more beautiful – through exploration of the moral construction of the charac­ters. As the film progresses, the producer becomes more and more the producer, the starlet more and more the starlet, un­til the moment of shock and explosion at the end. Films of this kind need exceptional act­ing, and in this case we are more than sat­isfied by Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Shel­ley Winters, and especially Rod Steiger, who plays the producer magnificently. He is a patriot, a democrat, both fierce and sentimental, completely mad. Aside from presenting a very exact picture of Hollywood, The Big Knife is the most refined and intelligent American film we have seen for a number of months.
François Truffaut, The Films in My Life, transl. by Leonard Mayhew, Simon & Schuster, New York 1978