Ace in the Hole

Directed by: Billy Wilder – 1 hour, 51 minutes – 1951 – USA – B&W – DVD – 1.37:1
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Porter Hall

After the success of Sunset Blvd., Billy Wilder tried to go one step bleaker, and was rewarded with a commercial and critical failure, though at least the critics eventually came around. Ace in the Hole tells the story of Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas, in a performance that’s unhinged even by Kirk Douglas standards), a down‐and‐out New York reporter who has left a trail of burned bridges on his way to a tiny newspaper in Albuquerque. Determined to rebuild his career, Tatum eventually stumbles onto the perfect story – the owner of a small desert trading post has been trapped in a cave collapse while searching for sacred Indian artifacts. Though the rescue should only take a day, Tatum needs a story and the victim’s wife wants some extra business before going ahead with her original plan to leave her husband, who she’s grown bored with. So after coercing the local sheriff, it’s decided to leave the poor bastard in his hole and let the rubes roll in to enjoy their proximity to tragedy, and hopefully spend some money while doing it.

Needless to say, early ‘50s audiences weren’t quite on board. Neither were the critics, who lined up in sanctimonious defense against the movie’s bleak appraisal of America and its media. As Guy Maddin notes, “Wilder’s effects and Douglas’s priapic performance are in the service of a story that was lambasted as hopelessly cynical by the critics of the day. Since most critics considered themselves newspapermen and therefore within the target range of the movie’s furious contempt, this makes a certain sense.” But the movie eventually came to be appreciated among Wilder’s best, if not one of his better‐known films.  

Trailer
IMDB page
Guy Maddin essay – ‘Ace in the Hole: Chin up for Mother’ [SPOILERS] ‐ I’ll be reading some excerpts from this after the movie, because it’s funny and perceptive, and because it describes Kirk Douglas as ‘a wagon train of grimace, howl, and unlaunched sputum,’ which is amazing.