Reviews Aug 22 2008 @ 08:00 am
REVIEW: Ace in the Hole
Directed By: Billy Wilder
Written By: Billy Wilder & Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Bob Arthur, Porter Hall
Running Time: 111 minutes
Not Rated
In the first half of his career, director Billy Wilder specialized in films revealing the dark underbelly of American society. With Double Indemnity, he all but created the noir aesthetic. The Lost Weekend was the first film to realistically convey the horror of alcohol addiction and Sunset Boulevard exposed the superficiality of the Hollywood system with seamless direction and beautiful gothic sensibility. In 1951, Wilder had one more dark drama in him before moving on to comedy and farce.
Ace in the Hole was a landmark film for Billy Wilder, but not in the way most would think. The finished product was a critical and box-office flop. Audiences and critics were less than impressed with it and the executive of Paramount Studios decided to change the picture’s name to The Big Carnival, creating an allure of audience accessibility. But Ace In the Hole was also the first movie for which Wilder shared writing, producing, and directing credit. It was Wilder’s show and the final product is his complete vision.
Kirk Douglas as Charles Tatum
Kirk Douglas plays Charles Tatum, a brash, proud blow-gut recently eviscerated from New York. Tatum has been fired from multiple big-name newspapers because of his lying ways, a drinking problem, and even a moment of indiscretion that involved an affair with his editor’s wife. Now he’s in need of a job – a “swimming board” enabling him to float back to a bigger, better career – and he’s rolling into Albuquerque, New Mexico in his fancy car attached to the end of a tow truck. The Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin office strikes catches his eye.
Tatum enters and is shocked by how boring the office seems. After pacing aimlessly for a few moments, something catches his eye: there’s a piece of needlework hung above the editor’s door that simply says “Tell The Truth.”
That nagging needlework
“Well, isn’t that something. Who said it?” Tatum says with mocking relish.
“Mr. Boot said it, but I did the needlework.” replies the aging (but youthful) secretary.
Jacob Q. Boot is the editor of The Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin and he’s adroit at dealing with folks like Charles Tatum who immediately begins telling Boot how reading the paper made him want to throw up. Boot nonchalantly offers Tatum his nickel back and ultimately gives the man a job despite his insolent persona.
Tatum spends a year at the paper without one big story, until he’s given the opportunity to travel with a young reporter to cover a story about rattlesnake derby – far from a big break. On their way, the two men come upon an abandoned filling station where they’re informed that a man called Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) is trapped alive in an ancient Indian dwelling up the road.
Tatum in the hole
Under a manipulative guise of caring and responsibility, Tatum manipulates the already corrupt local sheriff, the engineer in charge of the increasingly elaborate rescue operation, and even Leo’s uncaring wife Lorraine Minosa (Jan Sterling). The simple rescue operation that could have been completed in twelve hours lasts six days and Charles Tatum creates a colorful media circus – a national attraction – in the middle of the desert. Everyone other than Leo Minosa profits his fate.
All great artists know that it is impossible to understand human nature and experience without looking at the extremes of greatness and vileness. Film noir prefers looking at the vile and Ace in the Hole proves that noir can sometimes be more about themes than aesthetics. Of all the films in the common noir catalogue, Ace in the Hole is one of the hardest to classify as noir. The harsh vision of the world and shadowy lighting in the cave where Leo Minosa is trapped seem noirish, but Wilder’s gutting of the sensationalistic media and the citizens who eagerly watch every filthy moment of it (“Mr. and Mrs. America”, as Tatum would say) is about as far from the criminal city streets of noir as you can get. Charles Tatum bears resemblance to paradigmatic noir protagonist, but could be best thought of as a typical noir “hero” taking a vacation from the city.
If there’s a real hero in this story from Wilder’s perspective, its Jacob Q. Boot; the scrawny, cautious newspaper editor who wears both glasses and suspenders … the man who supposedly coined the phrase “Tell The Truth” and hung it up all over his office building. Boot hires Tatum from the onset and consistently tells him to straighten up. He even takes a hiatus to the New Mexico desert during the heat of the journalistic carnival in an attempt to talk some sense into the derailed journalist.
During this encounter, Tatum becomes inflamed with rage as only a character played by Kirk Douglas can:
I don’t belong in your office. Not with that embroidered sign on the wall; it gets in my way. […] I’m on my way back to the top, and if it takes a deal with a crooked sheriff, that’s alright with me! And if I have to fancy it up with an Indian curse and a broken hearted wife for Leo, then that’s alright too!
Few things are scarier than a raging Kirk Douglas
Statements like this are what make the film’s ending so powerful because Jacob Boot’s office is where Tatum drags his bleeding, guilt-ridden body in a last-minute attempt to recover his soul. After being stabbed by an unwittingly feisty female, Tatum’s misery has brought upon him a sense of guilt which never gets a chance to fully break through his tough-as-nails exterior. Before lumbering back to town, he tries to tell a New York Times editor how he’s kept Minosa trapped for personal gain, but the newspaper mogul is too proud to listen. In a sordid and pitch-black way, Charles Tatum wants some kind of absolution, to come clean of his actions … something very rare for a noir hero.
It’s obvious that Wilder was quite the cynic and the world of Ace in the Hole can seem absurdly cynical upon first viewing. The moral reprobation of Charles Tatum is endless and the rate at which “the big carnival” grows (particularly the admission sign to the Indian ruins consistently advancing in price and the ridiculous big city attractions dragged out to the desert by the media) is wearying. Yet upon second viewing Ace in the Hole is so calculated and full of life that its environment seems like a haunting reality more than fifty years after its making. It may seem bleedingly obvious and even farcical the first time around, but if you’ve been out in the world long enough, the truth of it can’t be denied.
When all is said and done, Leo Minosa wasn’t trapped in The Cave of the Seven Vultures by rocks and firmament. He was trapped there by none other than Charles Tatum’s desire to become rich and famous, to make a name for himself and prove his place in the world. With efficacious realism, Ace in the Hole echoes a piece of wisdom known the world over but only rarely applied: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”
on Aug 22 2008 @ 9:57 am 1. Sam Juliano said …
Let me be the first to congratulate Luke Harrington on yet another stellar entry in the Movie Zeal film noir series. This is one of my personal favorites, and it ranks as one of Wilder’s three unquestionable masterpieces with DOUBLE INDEMNITY and SUNSET BOULEVARD. And yes, Luke you can never play down the cynicism, as this is actually the director’s MOST cynical film, even ahead of SUNSET BOULEVARD with it’s dead narrator. You really nailed down this film with this great essay.
on Aug 22 2008 @ 9:59 am 2. Sam Juliano said …
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
There’s only one problem: Luke didn’t write it! It was written by my good friend Mr. Phillip Johnston, who has also, like Luke, contributed several great pieces in this series. Ah well, no harm I hope. There two are interchangeble in their astute treatments.
on Aug 22 2008 @ 10:03 am 3. Luke Harrington said …
I’m happy to take credit for the work of others. It’s the fastest route to success.
on Aug 22 2008 @ 12:03 pm 4. FDr said …
Nice post. I was surprised by your choice of Boot as a kind of hero of the movie. He does represent the ethical center of Ace in Hole, but I sense much sympathy on Wilder’s part for Charles Tatum. Tatum operates very much like a director, orchestrating the whole production of the cave drama, and he also thinks very much like a writer (just as Wilder wrote most of his movies)who is tormented by the temporary “success” of his fiction. I always thought Wilder was exploring the ugly underside of his own creative process even as he simultaneously lampooned the American desire for spectacle that feeds on death. I find the toxic brew of the film bracing and still very contemporary, given America’s tendency to endlessly distract itself with media storms.
on Aug 22 2008 @ 12:28 pm 5. Alexander Coleman said …
Terrific review, Phillip.
Interestingly, apparently Billy Wilder believed that he had perhaps gone “too far” in his bitingly cynical depiction of an ambitious American journalist. Then he found himself watching a journalist taking taking pictures of the people involved in a car accident without any care for notifying anyone about the condition of the persons involved. Wilder reportedly said that, maybe, he had not gone far enough.
I love this film, and I love Kirk Douglas in this.
on Aug 22 2008 @ 7:07 pm 6. films noir said …
A good review Phillip of Wilder’s best movie.
Wilder said of the audience response at the time: “Americans expected a cocktail and felt I was giving them a shot of vinegar instead.”
And in retrospect the NY Times had this to say:
“A brilliant arrangement of cause and effect…
unique as a mirror of the morbid psychology of
crowds… revolting but incontrovertibly true.”
For me Ace in the Hole is a savage critique not only of a corrupted but also a corrupting modern mass media.
There are noir elements in the movie, but classifying it as a noir unfairly limits its scope and the depth of social criticism.
Only the poor trapped man, his inconsolable parents, and as Phillip points out, the owner of the small town newspaper, have any true decency. Everyone else, is either corrupt or corruptible, if not downright stupid or plain evil - the trapped man’s floozy of a wife included, and Tatum’s naive young photographer is easily seduced by the reporter’s phoney charisma. The corrupt sheriff who actively conspires with Tatum, even after he is told the poor trapped man is doomed, wants to use this turn of events to his political advantage.
The power of this film resonates today, when countries go to war on manufactured evidence and manipulative spin. Innocent lives are as expendable today as they always have been in the cause of political ambition and warped ideological agendas: a world where the spin doctor rules.
on Aug 22 2008 @ 7:08 pm 7. Sam Juliano said …
What terrific additions there, films noir.
on Aug 22 2008 @ 7:51 pm 8. Phillip Johnston said …
Sam: that’s the second time you’ve confused me for Luke. I’m going to develop a complex.
Thanks so very much for the compliment, though.
films noir: hearing your approval of this review does my heart good because you appear to know more about film noir than anyone who has posted here. As Sam said, your additions are essential and I would probably agree with you about Ace in the Hole being Wilder’s best film. From what I’ve seen of his canon, its certainly the most timeless.
on Aug 22 2008 @ 7:59 pm 9. films noir said …
Tks Sam and Phillip, but it is all you guys who write the great reviews, which are the catalysts for discussion. As I have posted on my blog: this initiative has engendered the most intelligent and informed film noir forum in cyberspace.
on Aug 22 2008 @ 8:24 pm 10. Matthew Lucas said …
I love this one…and it’s still so relevant, if not more so, than it was then.
on Aug 24 2008 @ 12:58 pm 11. Allan Fish said …
Superb piece, Philip. It’s been a few years since I wrote the following for my book of mini-essays about the masterpieces of the screen. Please be aware that my mini-reviews, as Sam will tell you, are all written with distinct time and space limits and try to avoid theoretical babble, presenting more a layman’s view. In other words, don’t expect anything as prosaic as your piece.
Considering that Billy Wilder is commonly and quite rightly regarded as one of Hollywood’s all-time great directors it is quite surprising that one of his masterpieces seems never to be acknowledged as such. By not being acknowledged I am not talking about how it is viewed in film guides and magazines, who invariably give it the highest marks, but in terms of when people come to discuss Wilder’s greatest film. You will get votes for Double Indemnity, for Some Like it Hot, for Sunset Boulevard, for The Apartment and even for The Lost Weekend, but you will very rarely – if indeed ever- see any votes for Ace in the Hole.
Of course this could be down to many people only knowing it under its alternative title, but I think in many ways it is suffering from the media backlash it received upon its release and which not only hampered its commercial chances irreparably but also its reputation. Did Wilder believe that after performing a cynical autopsy on Hollywood in Sunset Boulevard that all media was fair game? Was Wilder being naïve? Possibly. But if so it was the sort of naïveté from which greatness flows.
The story concerns cynical former hotshot big city reporter Chuck Tatum, who comes to a small mid west town, gets a job at a local rag to make ends meet but then sees his big chance for a return to a big city paper when a cave-in traps a man inside under a hill. He is told by all those in the know that getting him out will be easy, but Tatum coerces the corrupt local sheriff into getting the emergency crews to take a longer route to get their man, to give enough time for Tatum to whip up media frenzy. However, when complications ensue and the trapped man comes close to death, it becomes a race against time to get to him.
Such a story was always going to run into trouble as the printed media are happy to see other media forms such as Hollywood and the theatre (in Mankiewicz’s All About Eve) torn apart, but not their own. Hence the film was a failure, but in this humble reviewer’s opinion it is arguably Wilder’s greatest film because it is pure Wilder cynicism (the only director more cynical than Wilder was Clouzot), undiluted and still as fresh and potent today as it was then. Though the direction and script are splendidly sharp, it’s the performances that make the thing; Porter Hall and Ray Teal give telling support, but Kirk Douglas is simply sensational in what for me is his greatest role. His Chuck Tatum is charismatic in his repulsiveness, his catchphrases and quotes the stuff of legend. Forever trying to present an image of a hardboiled newspaperman in the Lee Tracy and Ned Sparks tradition, he’s actually a past-it loser in search of a last hurrah, feverishly gripping his big story like Richie McCaw refusing to let go of the ball in the ruck or maul. In the end, though, it all backfires on him as the trapped man succumbs, thus making him effectively guilty of manslaughter. There is no more fitting end in movie history than Douglas, stabbed with scissors by Jan Sterling, staggering to his boss and exclaiming “I’m a thousand dollar a day newspaperman, Mr Boot. You can have me for nothing”, at which he falls into the camera, dead. But we’ll leave the final words to Douglas himself, “the unfavourable reviews of this movie about an unscrupulous newspaper reporter were written by newspaper reporters. Critics love to criticise but don’t like being criticised. Also, Billy Wilder was saying to Mr and Mrs Average, “this is you, the people who stop and stare at accidents.”" Spot on!