Rod Steiger

The Harder They Fall

by
Humphrey Bogart close up

The Harder They Fall is Humphrey Bogart’s farewell movie. He’d been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer not long before shooting started and knew he didn’t have long to live. Though he looks tired and ill, it doesn’t affect his performance. In fact it probably enhances it. Careworn individuals being something of a Bogart speciality. In a version of the character he’d been playing since The Maltese Falcon made him a superstar and Casablanca reinforced it, Bogart is a journalist down on his luck who is hired by a boxing promoter to puff his boy to the heavens and turn him into a champion. This in spite of the fact that the kid cannot fight, … Read more

The Big Knife

by
Ida Lupino and Jack Palance

1955’s The Big Knife is where a lot of people turn when they fancy another wallow in the filth and corruption of showbiz and have already done In a Lonely Place or The Sweet Smell of Success. The line-up looks promising. It’s based on a play by Clifford Odetts, who co-wrote the screenplay for In a Lonely Place with Ernest Lehman. It’s directed by Robert Aldrich, who liked to hang around in dark corners (Kiss Me Deadly, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane) and the director of photography is Ernest Laszlo, a master of dramatic lighting (Stalag 17, While the City Sleeps, Inherit the Wind). The cast is promising too. What you need … Read more