Customer Reviews
See Kirk Douglas act like a total ace-hole! 
2008-09-07
In 1950 Billy Wilder was riding high. Fresh off the enormously successful Sunset Boulevard, the German-born Wilder decided to make a very different film; one somewhat critical of the society of his new home, the United States. That film was called Ace in the Hole.
The movie concerns Kirk Douglas as a down-on-his-luck reporter who has been fired from just about every major newspaper in the country. Starting with New York, he's gone from large market to small, and now has ended up in Alberquerque. He's a self-described $250 a week reporter, but settles for $60 a week, and makes it clear at one point he'd be willing to take even less.
But his character, Chuck Tatum, has dreams. Yes, he does. He dreams that one day, the Great Story will drop into his lap. A story that will let him write his way out of the situation he's in, one that will let him write his own ticket and get back to New York.
That Great Story drops into his lap one day when, while on the way to cover a rattlesnake hunt, he stops at a gas station and finds out there's a man trapped in a nearby cave. He boldly goes into the gave, meets Leo Mimosa (Richard Benedict), the man trapped inside, and smells a story.
Immediately he begins to sabotage the rescue efforts. When the engineer in charge of getting Mimosa out explains that it might take most of a day to get him out safely, Tatum conconcts a much more convulted rescue plan, one that will certainly take days. Days during which he can write a great story about this poor man trapped in a mountin. A story that will finally take him back to New York.
Along the way he meets the slightly corrupt sheriff (Ray Teal), who is more-than-willing to help him, figuring the attention boosts his chances of getting relected. Also present is Mimosa's wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling), who can't stand her husband and wants to leave. Tatum practically forces her to remain, saying the story works so much better if there's a grieving wife at home for him to focus on.
As the days roll past, people begin to show up. First just a family on their way to a nice vaction, who end up settling in for the long haul. Before you know it, the entire area is filled with cars, as people come from miles around to witness this great story. Eventually a large carnvial builds up around the site (in fact the movie was, at one point, called The Big Carnival). Access to the cave area, once free, goes from 25 cents a car to 50 cents, and then to a dollar. The gas station is making money hand over fist. Tatum is being courted by New York. Everyone is benefiting. Everyone but Leo.
Things begin to change in the life of everyone involved, including Tatum, when Leo starts to get sicker and sicker. Tatum quickly realizes the story doesn't work if the man in the cave doesn't make it out alive, and starts to try and change his tactics, only to find out that it might be too late.
The story is based to a great extent on real-life events in 1925, when a man named Floyd Collins became trapped in a mine. It also put me in mind of those stories back in the late 80's and early 90's, where it seemed like every week some kid was getting trapped in a well. If nothing else, this movie shows well that the media circus that errupted around those wells was little different from what has gone before.
When the movie was released, it was largely panned. Many people seemed to think it was overly-cynical and presented an image of America as it wasn't. The film also failed miserably at the box office. It did get an Oscar nomination, for the screenplay, but lost. Most people today have never even heard of the film, and that's a tragedy.
The movie was recently released on DVD by the Criterion Collection and turns up on Turner Classic Movies from time-to-time. It's an exceptional film, with stunning cinematography, great performances and a wonderful screenplay. It feels amazingly modern despite being 57 years old.
Roger Ebert said of this movie:
"Wilder, true to this vision and ahead of his time, made a movie in which the only good men are the victim and his doctor. Instead of blaming the journalist who masterminds a media circus, he is equally hard on sightseers who pay 25 cents admission. Nobody gets off the hook here."
He's exactly correct. The public that eats up these stories is every bit as culpable as the journalists who create them. If we ignore these stories, they'll go away. Instead the public lavishes attention onto them, encouraging the worst in journalism. On the plus side, at least in this case, it makes for a wonderful, if sometimes hard to watch, film.
Bad news sells best. 
2008-02-11
Ignored, unappreciated, even despised by the majority upon its initial release, Ace in the Hole is a bold social critique that pulls no punches. This movie holds up the public mirror and tries to make people see just how much they suck.
Kirk Douglas delivers another fearless performance as Charles Tatum, a shameless big-city reporter that has been exiled from several lucrative jobs. So he retreats to a small town newspaper gig in New Mexico, in order to reestablish his career.
Tatum hates his new job, and desperately searches for the big break that will propel him back into the limelight. That moment eventually comes when a mine collapses, trapping a worker inside. Tatum takes charge of all the relief efforts, not out of concern for the desperate man inside, but for the fame that accompanies this tragedy. A media frenzy ensues.
One moment that illustrates Tatum's arrogance--other reporters try to move in and capture some of the news coverage. One says "We're all in the same boat". Tatum's cynical response was "No, I'm in the boat. You're in the water."
This movie is an excellent display of humanity's overall decline of morality. How vanity supersedes compassion. How humanity has lost touch with one another. I'm not trying to sound judgemental, heck I'm ignoring all company policies and personal job responsibilities by writing this review. Nobody's perfect. But this is a great movie, with powerful but controlled acting and a significant message.
So now, go hug a stranger. No, on second thought you better not. You'll probably get punched.
True Movie Geeks Rejoice! 2008-01-13
I bought this DVD for my boyfriend for a Christmas present with my fingers crossed. It's impossible to describe how movie-centric he is... we've chosen vacation destinations based on movies. It was a HUGE hit! He's watched all of the extras at least once now, and he loved the creative way Criterion made the front insert look like an old newspaper. It's gritty, ahead of it's time, and Kirk Douglas is a true star! Criterion wins again (as if anyone thought it'd be otherwise!).
Easily one of the best movies I saw this year. 2007-12-20
Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951)
Thank heaven (or Criterion) for a release of Billy Wilder's notorious and brilliant Ace in the Hole for the home video market. As topical as it may have been fifty-six years ago, today it has an unprecedented relevance to American society. It's rare that a film's importance grows over time. This is one of those cases.
The story centers around Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas in the performance of his career), a disgraced newspaper reporter who finds himself working in the backwoods world of Albuquerque journalism, covering compelling news stories like a rattlesnake contest. While on his way to cover one such story with cub photographer Herbie Cook (Green Grass of Wyoming's Robert Arthur), he stumbles into something much bigger: Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), who owns a service station/knickknack shop in the dusty little town of Los Barios, has gotten himself trapped in a mine collapse while looking for Indian relics in a cliff dwelling to sell to tourists. Rather than simply helping the guy out, getting one story, and going on with his life, Tatum-- desperate to get back in the good graces of the Eastern papers with a strong series of stories-- concocts a plan with the corrupt local Sheriff (Ray Teal) to keep the story alive for a week. In the process, he manipulates everyone around him, including Leo's cynical yet naïve wife (Jan Sterling).
Wilder takes the idea of the media circus to new heights here (including having an actual circus on the grounds during the latter half of the film). Ace in the Hole is a relentlessly pessimistic film in which no one cares about Leo Minosa the human being, only about Leo Minosa the story and what each person can get out of it. Leo's wife wants a way out of hicksville, as does Tatum (and, to a lesser extent, Herbie); the sheriff wants re-elected; the head engineer of the rescue team wants an exclusive on the fat contracts that come with the sheriff's re-election; even the competing papers' journalists, who are the only people in the film kinda-sorta set up as the good guys, just want the story, and their editors eventually want Tatum. After a while, news stops being news and starts being entertainment. (Note that Wilder has no illusions about this from the get-go; the first story Tatum files has less to do with Leo Minosa than the Indian curse that Minosa believes trapped him in the shaft.) This, of course, is exactly what's been happening to American culture since not long after Watergate.
Topicality, though, is not the only reason to watch Ace in the Hole. Wilder was one of those great directors, now an endangered species, who could do anything (and often did); the melodramatic Ace in the Hole was bookended by Sunset Blvd., the finest piece of film noir of all time, and Stalag 17, the movie that (loosely) formed the basis of the television show Hogan's Heroes. Imagine a modern director filming three so widely differing movies in a row, not to mention having all three of the movies, fifty years later, being known as timeless classics of filmdom. Wilder got the most out of every actor he ever cast in a movie, and knew where to put the cameras and how to film the shots so that all that acting talent could be showcased in the finest possible way. A Billy Wilder movie is filmmaking at its best, and Ace in the Hole, finally available again after languishing in obscurity so long, is ample evidence of that. **** ½
A great film with a major flaw! 2007-12-09
Ace In The Hole (aka The Big Carnival) was directed by my hero, Billy Wilder. He is the genius who gave us Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot - three of my all-time favorite films. Ace In The Hole, however, suffers from the over-the-top performance of Kirk Douglas who manages to play every scene with clenched teeth and boiling-point anger. His early scenes in the small newspaper office in Albuquerque are so over-played that he comes off like a man in need of a straight-jacket rather than a job. I believe it would be a more powerful film if his character were a little more sympatetic initially, thereby shocking us once his dark side is fully revealed. As it stands now, we are not surprised at the depth of his depravity because of Douglas' inability to bring some subtlety to his performance. Having said all that, there is much here to recommend...some solid acting performances and a powerful story of greed and power and how contagious corruption is. Jan Sterling stands out as the cold and indifferent wife of the man trapped in the cave. She delivers the only funny line in the movie, "I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons." She can be seen in Caged and in her Oscar-nominated performance in The High And The Mighty. In closing, I would like to say that I think William Holden would have brought more subtley and dimension to the lead role. However, it is what it is and I my hope is that this review has peaked your curiosity and you will watch the film and decide for yourself.
Billy Wilder makes us squirm, and Ace in the Hole makes it worthwhile: It's an excellent film 2007-11-03
One of the most scathing indictments of American culture ever produced by a Hollywood filmmaker, Academy Award-winner Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole is legendary for both its cutting social critique and its status as a hard-to-find cult classic. Kirk Douglas gives the fiercest performance of his career as Chuck Tatum, an amoral newspaper reporter caught in dead-end Albuquerque who happens upon the story of a lifetime-and will do anything to ensure he gets the scoop. Wilder's follow-up to Sunset Boulevard is an even darker vision, a no-holds-barred expose that anticipated the rise of the American media circus.
A manufactured media event 2007-10-17
Kirk Douglas stars as smug and unscrupulous newspaper reporter Charles Tate in director Billy Wilder's 1951 film noir classic "Ace in the Hole". This film created on the heels of Wilder's fantastic "Sunset Boulevard", while well acted and contrived, bombed at the box office. The social commentary presented in the film, perhaps touched a raw nerve in the viewing public.
Douglas finds himself down and out in Albuquerque, having been bounced from numerous prestigious positions from influential newspapers. He begs the local editor for a job hoping to uncover a story that will propel him back into the limelight. As luck would have it just such a situation arises as he's out covering a local interest story.
An Indian curio shop owner Leo Minosa played by Richard Benedict becomes trapped in a cave-in while collecting artifacts in a underground Indian burial ground. Douglas stumbles across this and meanders his way through the honeycombed underground lair to meet the trapped man, all the while scheming to turn his misfortunate to his own benefit. Douglas coercing the cooperation of a corrupt local sheriff manages to totally control the entire media coverage of the event.
Working in concert with a mining engineer Douglas helps devise a questional rescue effort which will take many days to rescue poor Leo Mimosa. More than enough time for Douglas to exploit the circumstances and turn it into a media circus. Mimosa's ex-dance hall wife Lorraine played by Jan Sterling is only too happy to go along, hoping to turn a tidy profit by the rush of onlookers and passersby patronizing their curio shop and restaurant.
The events turn preposterous as a carnival complete with circus tents and rides pops up right beside the rescue effort obscuring the fact that a trapped man's life hangs in the balance.
Douglas finally receives the accolades he desires and his old New York job back when he learns that the trapped Minosa is dying of pneumonia. It's too late for penitence when Douglas realizes that the delays he caused in the rescue effort directly caused the demise of the man.
The clairvoyant Wilder in his film touched upon a topic that still is in the forefront of the media coverage of today. Sensationalism still sells newspapers and television time. The O.J. trial and coverage of Operation Desert Storm both bear testament to that fact.
People just ain't no good; before Network, there was Ace in the Hole 2007-10-08
Until now I've only seen one Billy Wilder film, and that was Some Like it Hot. While gaining a new found respect for Jack Lemmon, and to a lesser degree Tony Curtis, I couldn't stand to watch it, I hardly laughed, and my hate for Marilyn Monroe just increased by the end.
So, it was with a bit of caution, and a subjectively negative opinion, that I went into Ace in the Hole.
All I can say is that I absolutely love it when something like this happens; I got into a film expecting something and get something entirely the opposite. The last time I saw a film that hit me with such force was a few months back after my initial viewing of Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar. In the end both films left me completely open mouthed, unable to express how amazed I was at their power. This has definitely made it's place into my top 10 of all time.
For pre-method acting days, the performances are utterly impeccable, not cardboard like some of the other Hollywood productions of that era. Kirk Douglas was absolutely captivating as, quite possibly, the first anti-hero, a man who you love one minute and then despise the next. Everything about the film, the pacing, the cinematography, the score, is superb, and without fault.
Yes, it is an intensely cynical film, and that is one of the reasons I adore it. I prefer my films to have a sense of reality, to depict what would REALLY happen, not what some schmuck Hollywood screenwriter would like to happen in some fantasy world. So, it's with the combination of cynicism, misanthropy and reality that Ace in the Hole really shines in comparison to most "the media is evil" films.
Truly a film that should be viewed by every living human being, more than once.
Reality Does Not Live Up to the Legend 
2007-10-07
SPOILER ALERT: THIS REVIEW REVEALS THE END OF THE MOVIE.
"Ace in the Hole" is legendary; for years, while it was hard to find, its many boosters praised it as a caustic and fearless expose of American tabloid journalism. In fact, though, "Ace in the Hole" is a predictable, ham-handed, bombastic, manipulative B movie that "exposes" more about its boosters than about American culture.
"Ace"'s first five minutes telegraph the entire movie - you don't need to watch it to see how anything will play out. "Ace in the Hole" is a fantasy for the kind of male who uses the word "sheeple," thinks that he is several IQ measurements superior to the mass of humanity, and looks down on humanity with its stupid values like religion and family. "Ace" plays to the man who thinks he, or another Nietzschean superman, singlehandedly orchestrates all human activity, and that the rest of us are just marionettes jerking around at the end of his strings.
The viewer is supposed to believe that sleaze-ball journalist Tatum (Kirk Douglas) exercises hypnotic power over all humanity. This is completely unbelievable, except, again, to people with some fantasy of hyper-potent men. Douglas gives a performance so over the top it would be vulgar in a telemundo soap opera. Douglas' eyes pop out of his head; his veins pop out of his neck; his lips turn prehensile; he chews up the scenery like a teething infant who is the reincarnation of a man who starved to death. Not a single other character in the movie serves as a foil to him -- everyone else is a puny, fearful, clueless, bland midget next to Douglas. How could any intelligent viewer's attention be held by such a stacked deck?
"Ace"'s boosters insist that it was a prescient film that accurately depicted media carnivals like that over the Duke Lacrosse Case. Not so. The Duke Lacrosse Case was interesting and can hold your attention; "Ace" is not and cannot. Mike Nifong, like Tatum, conspired to damage other, innocent people in order to aggrandize himself. But Nifong, unlike Tatum, was up against three-dimensional human beings who could thwart his designs, thus making that story *interesting.*
The B-movie-style stacked deck of "Ace" is made very clear when, in a relatively early scene, Douglas strikes an armed police officer and that police officer stands stock still, never responding. The only person who could believe that scene is a viewer utterly invested in the fantasy macho omnipotence Wilder invests in Tatum, and/or someone who has never actually met a cop. You want to find yourself on your stomach on the ground with your wrists handcuffed behind your back? Strike a cop as Tatum does.
Similarly, Tatum's ability to orchestrate the rescue effort of a man trapped underground, making sure that rescuers won't reach him in sixteen hours, as they'd proposed, but in seven days, is beyond belief. The authorities had to know that, in addition to Tatum, there were other hungry press circling like sharks, and those reporters would soon enough discover Tatum's deadly ruse, and metaphorically or literally lynch him and his co-conspirators.
In the end, Tatum has a moment of truth and reveals that, all along, he was the only person in the world with any sensitivity and integrity. He receives a fatal stab wound, and, superman that he is, his shirt is not torn, and he bleeds a teeny amount; he goes on to march around, call an end to the circus he started - the carousel and ferris wheel actually stop for him -- and makes a rousing speech to the masses.
Though dying, Tatum doesn't stop there. He confesses his crime. He mentors a sweet young lad. Then he finally falls in the most cinematically dramatic pose possible. This movie wants, very badly, to have its cake and eat it, too. It's not a mockery of American tabloid entertainment, it *is*, in its heavy-handedness, manipulation, loudness and complete lack of surprise, with a big, strong, male superhero at its center, American tabloid entertainment.
Check out Fred MacMurray as Mr. Sheldrake in Wilder's "The Apartment." MacMurray never flairs his nostrils once, and no kettle drums announce his dastardly schemes, but his depiction of cynical evil is lightyears superior to that of Douglas / Tatum in "Ace in the Hole."
I love Billy Wilder; that's why I wanted so badly to see this movie. Here the master doesn't misstep, he thuds. In one scene, I *knew* how the scene would end even as it was beginning - the end of the scene would be a shot of the side of a bus, and then a shot of a woman's back as she returned to a building. Nothing surprised me here.
Given that, I started thinking about the movie, and the director, even as I was watching the movie, never a good sign. Wilder's family was murdered in the Holocaust. It is often commented upon that Wilder never made a Holocaust movie per se, but that themes appear in his work. For example, in "Emperor Waltz," an Austrian nobleman tries to drown puppies because they are not pedigree. I wonder, though, if "Ace in the Hole," with its depiction of most people as terribly hollow and venal, mere shadow-like followers of a superior, and monstrous, leader, is not Wilder's Holocaust film.
To tell the truth . . . 2007-10-01
Criterion's DVD release of this classic film from 1951 is a great gift to Billy Wilder fans. It's a hard-boiled tale of an unscrupulous reporter that cuts straight to the rotten heart of the news media, where information management and sensationalism have overwhelmed the simple idealism of "telling the truth." Kirk Douglas is terrific as the man who engineers a news event to advance his own career and creates a media circus in the process, at the expense of another man who lies trapped and dying in a cave-in. Meanwhile, Jan Sterling, as the other man's wife, turns in a performance that's even more nakedly self-serving.
Set in what is supposed to be the New Mexico desert, the on-location photography is startlingly realistic for a film of this era. As the story evolves, the visuals and camera movement take on the scale of an epic. The grim vision of the movie and its cinematic style put it in league with films like "Citizen Kane." It certainly deserves the kind of appreciation that Criterion brings to it. The DVD includes a Pauline Kael style commentary by film scholar Neil Sinyard. On a second disc, there are interviews with Wilder, Kirk Douglas, and screenwriter Walter Newman, plus comment by Spike Lee, Molly Haskell and Guy Maddin.
