{"id":53,"date":"2007-07-25T08:51:35","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T12:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=53"},"modified":"2009-09-10T22:28:17","modified_gmt":"2009-09-11T02:28:17","slug":"53","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=53","title":{"rendered":"Ace in the Hole (1951) – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/h1>\n

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\"Kirk<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling in the lobby card from Billy Wilder’s lost 1951 masterpiece, “Ace in the Hole”<\/dd>\n
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Wilder Than Reality Television<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h1>\n

[xrr rating=5\/5]<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ace in the Hole.<\/em>\u00a0Starring Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Bob Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady, Richard Benedict, Ray Teal, Lewis Martin, John Berkes, Frances Dominguez, Gene Evans, and Frank Jaquet. Music by Hugo Friedhofer. Cinematography by Charles B. Lang, Jr., A.S.C. Edited by Arthur Schmidt; Editorial supervision, Doane Harrison. Screenplay by Billy Wilder, Walter Newman, and Lesser Samuels. Directed by Billy Wilder. (Paramount, 1951, Black and White, 111 minutes. MPAA Rating: Not Rated.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The legendary Billy Wilder is my all-time favorite director. Many friends and those who read my reviews wrongly assume that Alfred Hitchcock is, and that\u2019s understandable. No other director, before or since Hitch, has had as intuitive a grasp of film as a\u00a0visual\u00a0<\/em>medium, of how to use not only the camera but also editing to tell a story.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

However, as much as I admire Hitchcock\u2019s classic thrillers, no director has inspired awe in me as much as Wilder. One of his enduring creations, aging screen siren Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in\u00a0Sunset Blvd.<\/em>, voiced words that, coincidentally, explain what made Wilder\u2019s movies so memorable:<\/p>\n

There was a time in this business when they had the eyes of the whole wide world! But that wasn\u2019t good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the\u00a0ears<\/em>\u00a0of the world, too! So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk!\u00a0Talk!<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And\u00a0what<\/em>\u00a0talk! For the Austrian-born Jewish \u00e9migr\u00e9, who fled Europe in the early 1930s when Hitler rose to power, the slang he picked up after he arrived on our shores was frenetic jazz music to his ears. It didn\u2019t take him long to channel his love of American lingo into feisty dialogue for comedic screenplays that he crafted with co-writer Charles Brackett. An urbane New Yorker, Brackett sanded the rough edges off Wilder\u2019s somewhat broken English. Their one-two punch of pugnacious palaver for such movies as Ernst Lubitsch\u2019s\u00a0Bluebeard\u2019s Eighth Wife<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Ninotchka<\/em>\u00a0made them a hugely popular screenwriting team.<\/p>\n

Take Howard Hawks\u2019s 1941\u00a0Ball of Fire.<\/em>\u00a0Barbara Stanwyck plays a wisecracking burlesque dancer.\u00a0<\/em>When fussy linguistics professor Gary Cooper examines her throat and gives his diagnosis, Stanwyck shoots back: \u201cA slight rosiness? It\u2019s as red as the\u00a0Daily Worker\u00a0<\/em>and just as sore!\u201d It\u2019s typical Wilder dialogue: sharp, silly, and stylized.<\/p>\n

Just as Hitch was the \u201cMaster of Suspense,\u201d Wilder was the master of farce. Think of Tony Curtis donning yachting clothes and deadpanning a hilarious Cary Grant impression in order to win Marilyn Monroe in\u00a0Some Like It Hot<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>Or Jack Lemmon humming Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien<\/em> off-key and straining spaghetti through a tennis racket for Shirley MacLaine\u2019s dinner in\u00a0The Apartment<\/em>. But Wilder\u2019s genius was not limited to comedy:\u00a0 his dramas were among the best ever filmed.<\/p>\n

Though he wrote for first-rate directors like Hawks and Lubitsch (whose elegant, lighthearted touch he later emulated), the fiercely independent Wilder decided to strike out on his own and direct when Mitchell Leisen butchered his and Brackett\u2019s screenplay for\u00a0Hold Back the Dawn.\u00a0<\/em>Wilder turned out a pair of well-received movies for Paramount\u2014the Ginger Rogers comedy\u00a0The Major and the Minor\u00a0<\/em>and the World War II thriller\u00a0Five Graves to Cairo.\u00a0<\/em>But it was his 1944 adaptation of James M. Cain\u2019s controversial pulp novel\u00a0Double Indemnity<\/em>\u00a0that propelled him into the first rank of directors.<\/p>\n

For that classic, Wilder audaciously broke every rule of movie storytelling. He cast nice guy Fred MacMurray as the heavy and made perennial gangster Edward G. Robinson the movie\u2019s moral center. Then he gave away the ending in the opening narration, as sap MacMurray, bleeding to death and slipping into unconsciousness, confesses into a Dictaphone: \u201cYes, I killed him. I killed him for money\u2014and a woman. I didn\u2019t get the money and I didn\u2019t get the woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

That daring paid off, big. Audiences were riveted to their seats as femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck lured the hapless insurance man to his doom. In 107 minutes, Wilder (working with hardboiled crime novelist Raymond Chandler) created a new movie genre: what French movie critics would later call\u00a0film noir<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Although\u00a0Double Indemnity\u00a0<\/em>would become the template for hundreds of crime movies through the late 1950s, Wilder never again made an outright\u00a0noir<\/em>. Instead, he incorporated many of its elements\u2014voiceover narration, close-ups combined with dissolves, and a dark, cynical view of human nature\u2014into gripping melodramas likeThe Lost Weekend\u00a0<\/em>(for which he won the best director Oscar in 1945) and Oscar-winning comedies like\u00a0Sunset Blvd.\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Stalag 17<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

After he and Brackett won the best original screenplay Oscar in 1950 for\u00a0Sunset Blvd.\u00a0<\/em>(their last collaboration), Wilder embarked on an ambitious project: He would write, direct, and also produce a film.<\/em>\u00a0For the 1951 Paramount project, he brought in radio dramatist Walter Newman as his collaborator and playwright Lesser Samuels to polish the dialogue. He also cast in the starring role a young Kirk Douglas, fresh off his volatile performance in\u00a0Champion.\u00a0<\/em>The result was Wilder\u2019s ruthlessly dark yet larger-than-life masterpiece:\u00a0Ace in the Hole.<\/em><\/p>\n

For more than a half-century,\u00a0Ace in the Hole<\/em>\u00a0has languished in Paramount\u2019s vaults. But it finally has been released by Criterion Collection, in a pristine transfer to DVD. The story behind this forgotten classic\u2019s fate is as intriguing as\u2014well, as a Billy Wilder movie.<\/p>\n

But first, the tale itself.<\/p>\n

Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a sensationalistic New York newspaperman down and out in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His car\u2019s got bad brakes and a busted wheel bearing. His reputation’s in need of even greater repair as he ambles arrogantly into the publisher\u2019s office of the small-time\u00a0Sun-Bulletin<\/em>, trying to land a job.\u00a0<\/em>\u201cI\u2019ve been fired from eleven papers with a total circulation of seven million,\u201d Tatum brags to editor Jacob Boot (Porter Hall). \u201cI can handle big news and little news. And if there\u2019s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boot’s a no-nonsense straight arrow, over whose desk hangs the paper\u2019s motto, immortalized in cross-stitch: \u201cTELL THE TRUTH.\u201d Warily, he hires Tatum. For his part, Tatum aims to get a scoop in a week or two\u2014a big story that the wire services will pick up and that will land him back on a big East Coast paper.<\/p>\n

After a fade-out, the story resumes a year later. Tatum\u2019s still stuck in the \u201csunbaked Siberia,\u201d covering mundane stories about county fairs and grip-\u2019n\u2019-grin ceremonies. He and young photographer Herbie (Bob Arthur), who idolizes him, are dispatched into the countryside to cover a rattlesnake hunt. On the drive, Tatum knocks Herbie\u2019s journalism school education and touts his own cynical philosophy: \u201cBad news sells best\u2014because good news is no news.\u201d<\/p>\n

But just as the film seems to be only a new spin on\u00a0The Front Page\u2014<\/em>set to Hugo Friedhofer\u2019s jaunty, Gershwinesque score\u2014it takes a sudden, dark turn. The pair stops to fill up their tank in the tiny hamlet of Escudero and learn that a man is trapped underground in a pueblo cliff dwelling, where he was searching for Indian relics.<\/p>\n

Despite a cop\u2019s objections, Tatum bullies his way into the cave with Herbie tagging along. Excited, he recalls the (real-life) Kentucky cave-in that trapped explorer Floyd Collins in 1925 and tells Herbie, \u201cA reporter on the\u00a0Louisville Herald<\/em>\u00a0crawled in for the story\u2014and came out with a Pulitzer Prize!\u201d<\/p>\n

They find Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) pinned beneath fallen boulders. Tatum snaps his photograph and tries to build up his confidence, telling him help is on the way. Emerging, he sets up his typewriter in the general store and pounds out a tall tale about how luckless Leo was trapped underground by vengeful spirits of the Indian dead.<\/p>\n

The next morning, though, a local construction contractor (Frank Jaquet) estimates his crew can shore up the walls and quickly get Leo out. Tatum suddenly sees his Pulitzer slipping out of reach\u2014and it\u2019s too much.<\/p>\n

Muscling his way across the screen, Douglas delivers a frightening, sinister performance. He promises the corrupt local sheriff (Ray Teal) that he\u2019ll use his byline to get the man re-elected\u2014if, in exchange, the lawman will pressure the contractor to change his rescue strategy. Instead of shoring up the cave, they\u2019ll rescue Leo by setting up a drilling rig on the top of the mountain\u2014a delay that will give Tatum a week to milk the story.<\/p>\n

Jan Sterling plays Leo\u2019s bottle-blonde wife, Lorraine, a tramp \u00a0trapped in a lousy marriage. She married Leo for the same reasons as any other gold-digger, but resents that she only struck dirt, while her na\u00efve husband worships the dirt she walks on. Tatum has snowed Leo\u2019s parents into thinking he\u2019s their son\u2019s savior, but Lorraine is wise to his deception. \u201cYesterday, you never heard of Leo. Today you can\u2019t know enough about him,\u201d she smirks. \u201cAren\u2019t you\u00a0sweet<\/em>.\u201d As she prepares to blow town, Tatum reproaches her for abandoning her husband beneath the fallen rocks. \u201cHoney,\u201d she shoots back, \u201cyou like those rocks just as much as I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilder uses a lot of symbolism from the book of Genesis to depict these scoundrels: Lorraine, the story\u2019s Eve, slyly bites into an apple; Sheriff Kretzer, a serpent of a public servant, keeps a pet rattlesnake in a shoebox; and meanwhile, Tatum plays God for the seven days of Leo\u2019s usable media life.<\/p>\n

Chuck Tatum\u2019s an Elmer Gantry\u2014a smooth-talking charlatan who inveigles his way out of anything and everyone out of his way. But there\u2019d be no Gantrys without the Babbitts who fall for their hokum. As Tatum\u2019s copy gains traction with the public, curiosity seekers move on Escudero by the dozens, then thousands, hoping to make their own lives more important through their proximity to tragedy. The land outside the cliff dwelling is transformed into a literal media circus as a carnival erects a Ferris wheel. \u201cWe\u2019re coming, we\u2019re coming, Leo!\u201d croons a country singer while a woman hawks sheet music of the song (a biting reference to country-western singer Vernon Dalhart\u2019s exploitive 1925 song \u201cThe Death of Floyd Collins\u201d).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

When no one\u2019s looking, Tatum silently grieves for Leo, although he keeps things in \u201cproper perspective\u201d\u2014the story comes first, and a lone man\u2019s race against time is how the story plays best. But the mob is Wilder\u2019s\u00a0real<\/em>\u00a0villain: They set up camp tents, shill cotton candy, and ride the tilt-o-whirl; for the rabble, it\u2019s all just entertainment.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Wilder never lets up the tension, either. The narrative and Friedhofer\u2019s orchestrations (now full of thundering timpani and Richard Straussian chromatics) pound ceaselessly, like the drill smashing through the rock, inching ever closer to Leo. The movie\u2019s bravura finale sent a lightning-quick chill straight up my spine.<\/p>\n

As social commentary,\u00a0Ace in the Hole\u00a0<\/em>was years ahead of its time, foreshadowing such cautionary films as Elia Kazan\u2019s\u00a0A Face in the Crowd\u00a0<\/em>and Sidney Lumet\u2019s\u00a0Network.\u00a0<\/em>It flopped when first released, so badly that the studio pulled it from circulation and re-released it with the title\u00a0The Big Carnival.\u00a0<\/em>Critics in the print media savaged it because Wilder had the chutzpah to attack their bread-and-butter methods so pitilessly. As a result, Paramount so neglected the movie that it\u2019s rarely shown even on television and, until now, has never been released in\u00a0any\u00a0<\/em>home-video format.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Wilder called this tale \u201csanitized\u201d compared to his experiences as a young writer for a scandal sheet in Vienna, when the paper sent him to interview the parents of murderers and their victims and to ask the universally reviled question, \u201cHow do you feel?\u201d<\/p>\n

The film was not successful because I brought the audience into the theater expecting a cocktail and instead I served them a shot of vinegar. . . . People rebelled against this image of themselves. Yet, when there is a plane wreck at Kennedy Airport the freeways are clogged with automobiles of people wanting to see the carnage. Meanwhile someone is going around selling weenies and spun sugar.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Has anything changed? If you want to see human depravity and mob psychology at its worst, just tune in to the 24\/7 electronic media and witness their coverage of whatever disaster\u00a0du jour<\/em>\u00a0is dominating the headlines. You\u2019ll see that the circus is still going strong.<\/p>\n

Ace in the Hole<\/em>\u00a0is not easy to watch. It\u2019s not supposed to be. Kirk Douglas\u2019s commanding performance as Chuck Tatum had me flinching, squirming. Billy Wilder didn\u2019t live long enough to see this movie earn its rightful place alongside so many of his great classics, but he always knew its worth.\u00a0\u201cFor a long time, when people asked, \u2018Which is your favorite film?\u2019 I answered, \u2018Ace in the Hole.<\/em>\u2019 I like that picture. I am proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a man of integrity and independence, he had every right to be.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling in the lobby card from Billy Wilder’s lost 1951 masterpiece, “Ace in the Hole” \u00a0 Wilder Than Reality Television [xrr rating=5\/5] Ace in the Hole.\u00a0Starring Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Bob Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady, Richard Benedict, Ray Teal, Lewis Martin, John Berkes, Frances […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,15,38,54,3,53],"tags":[16,20,19,82,22,21,17,18],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-black-comedies","category-classic-movies","category-comedies","category-melodramas","category-mreview","category-restored-re-releases","tag-billy-wilder","tag-black-and-white-movies","tag-black-comedy","tag-classic-movies","tag-comedy","tag-criterion-collection","tag-jan-sterling","tag-kirk-douglas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}