Please note: This was screened in Jan 2016
Playwright Clifford Odets (who was also the inspiration for the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink) was the golden boy of the famous left-wing Group Theatre collective in the 30s: his plays the toast of Broadway, hailed as a champion for the working classes. His reputation became irrefutably tarnished, however, when he named names for the HUAC in 1952, and many saw his stage play for Big Knife (here adapted by Kiss Me Deadly director Robert Aldrich) as his plea for forgiveness.
His vicious poison pen letter to the movie business stars Jack Palance as Charlie Castle, a huge film star who refuses to sign a long-term contract for big money with a studio run by the tyrannical Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger) - leading to a downward spiral blighted by blackmail, tabloid scandal, infidelity and betrayal.
In his Group Theatre colleague Elia Kazan's (who also named names) view, Odet's testimony ruined him: "naming his old comrades deprived him of the heroic identity he needed most. He was never the same again: he was no longer the hero-rebel, the fearless prophet of a new work. It choked off the voice he'd had" - and Castle's tragic ending reflects the moral dilemma Odets, Kazan and so many others faced in the 50s.