Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman, Victor Desny
Photography: Charles Lang
Music: Hugo Friedhofer
Editors: Doane Harrison, Arthur P. Schmidt
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Porter Hall, Robert Arthur, Richard Benedict, Ray Teal, Frank Cady, Richard Gaines
Director and cowriter Billy Wilder is one of my favorite filmmakers—Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd. are on my short list of the best of all time, and The Apartment is not far behind—but I’m reluctant to make too much of Ace in the Hole, which Wikipedia among many others includes with Wilder’s major work. I like the noirish feel of it but struggle with the narrative, which exaggerates outrageously under cover of being a satire. And I guess I may also have a Kirk Douglas problem. He plays Charles Tatum with his typical feral intensity, a weaselly ankle-biting reporter on a downward spiral, washing up in Albuquerque and hunting for a break. Any break will do.
The story involves a type of US news item that seems to recur and catch national attention every 10 or 20 years: kids down a well, specific people isolated in floods, miners in a cave-in. Stuff like that. The most famous case at the time of this picture may have been Floyd Collins, trapped for days in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave in 1925. The story was seized on for constant coverage by then-new radio broadcasters. An example on this side of the 20th century is “Baby Jessica,” who was 18 months old when she fell down a well in 1987. It took 58 hours to get her out. In Ace in the Hole the victim is Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), plundering a burial ground in a nearby mountain considered holy by local Native Americans. So among other things Ace in the Hole offers up an early version of violated Indian graveyard business, later a staple of horror pictures. For a long time everybody has hated the media, from newspapers, radio, and TV of the last century to the internet-driven landscape today. As hard as it may be to believe, it has been worse in the past (though we are presently challenging that more and more). This is one of those stories, a theme sounded in the great Citizen Kane, Meet John Doe, A Face in the Crowd, and many other movies.
Director and cowriter Billy Wilder is one of my favorite filmmakers—Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd. are on my short list of the best of all time, and The Apartment is not far behind—but I’m reluctant to make too much of Ace in the Hole, which Wikipedia among many others includes with Wilder’s major work. I like the noirish feel of it but struggle with the narrative, which exaggerates outrageously under cover of being a satire. And I guess I may also have a Kirk Douglas problem. He plays Charles Tatum with his typical feral intensity, a weaselly ankle-biting reporter on a downward spiral, washing up in Albuquerque and hunting for a break. Any break will do.
The story involves a type of US news item that seems to recur and catch national attention every 10 or 20 years: kids down a well, specific people isolated in floods, miners in a cave-in. Stuff like that. The most famous case at the time of this picture may have been Floyd Collins, trapped for days in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave in 1925. The story was seized on for constant coverage by then-new radio broadcasters. An example on this side of the 20th century is “Baby Jessica,” who was 18 months old when she fell down a well in 1987. It took 58 hours to get her out. In Ace in the Hole the victim is Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), plundering a burial ground in a nearby mountain considered holy by local Native Americans. So among other things Ace in the Hole offers up an early version of violated Indian graveyard business, later a staple of horror pictures. For a long time everybody has hated the media, from newspapers, radio, and TV of the last century to the internet-driven landscape today. As hard as it may be to believe, it has been worse in the past (though we are presently challenging that more and more). This is one of those stories, a theme sounded in the great Citizen Kane, Meet John Doe, A Face in the Crowd, and many other movies.
The scheming Tatum lands a job at an Albuquerque paper. Framed embroidery festoons the walls at the paper’s office, bearing the message, “Tell the Truth.” Tatum paces a lot, scoffing at the yahoos unschooled in the ways of big cities like New York or Chicago, where he has worked and been fired for drinking, philandering, unethical behavior, you name it. Why the publisher, Jacob Q. Boot (Porter Hall, certified hey-that-guy), would even give him a job in the first place was beyond me. Maybe because “everybody deserves a second chance,” as they say in other movies.
The cave-in caused by Leo Minosa’s reckless ransacking of the unstable mountain underground has resulted in his being pinned in place, his legs caught under rubble. Tatum takes control of the situation, generating national attention with sensational reporting. He’s soon involved with a corrupt sheriff to milk the situation for all it’s worth. Admission into the area is charged. Showy press conferences are mounted daily. Eventually giant crowds come daily and a whole carnival midway is erected at the rescue site, ferris wheel and all. All this vast and instant corruption has always been hard for me to believe in this movie. It seems overwritten, but these days I suppose it’s easier to believe anything along these lines.
A sizzling hot Jan Sterling, also memorable in the 1956 1984, plays Leo’s wife Lorraine. She despises Leo for bringing her out to New Mexico to work at his “trading post,” a hamburger diner that also sells tourist souvenirs. Sterling keeps up with Douglas pretty well and there’s enough chemistry there to keep it interesting. But Tatum is obsessively concerned with regaining his former position, getting back his job at a prestigious New York paper and making some big-time dough while he’s at it. He’s not much interested in women—in fact, he seems to hate them—so in a way Sterling is kind of wasted. But she gets the best line in the picture, when Tatum is demanding she go to early mass every day and play the grieving wife. “I don’t go to church,” she tells him. “Kneeling bags my nylons.”
There’s also a great country song written for the occasion by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans and performed by Bill Ramsey & the Rythem [sic, per IMDb] Wranglers, “We’re Coming, Leo,” which goes, “While you are in the cave-in hopin’ / We are up above you gropin’ / And we soon will make an openin’,” etc.
The story, which has operated all the way like an overheating engine, notably goes over the top at the finish. Tatum’s plan to delay and draw out the rescue effort goes fatally sideways, everything is lost, too late he is full of regret and self-recriminations, and the final image is a stark close-up, arguably done better in Sunset Blvd., but adequately arresting in its own regard. If you go for that sort of thing. Ace in the Hole is all right as caustic critique but so noisy about it that it too often undermines itself. Obviously, perhaps, I need some further education or something on Kirk Douglas, as I can see that my problems with him tend to stand in for my problems with this picture at large.
The cave-in caused by Leo Minosa’s reckless ransacking of the unstable mountain underground has resulted in his being pinned in place, his legs caught under rubble. Tatum takes control of the situation, generating national attention with sensational reporting. He’s soon involved with a corrupt sheriff to milk the situation for all it’s worth. Admission into the area is charged. Showy press conferences are mounted daily. Eventually giant crowds come daily and a whole carnival midway is erected at the rescue site, ferris wheel and all. All this vast and instant corruption has always been hard for me to believe in this movie. It seems overwritten, but these days I suppose it’s easier to believe anything along these lines.
A sizzling hot Jan Sterling, also memorable in the 1956 1984, plays Leo’s wife Lorraine. She despises Leo for bringing her out to New Mexico to work at his “trading post,” a hamburger diner that also sells tourist souvenirs. Sterling keeps up with Douglas pretty well and there’s enough chemistry there to keep it interesting. But Tatum is obsessively concerned with regaining his former position, getting back his job at a prestigious New York paper and making some big-time dough while he’s at it. He’s not much interested in women—in fact, he seems to hate them—so in a way Sterling is kind of wasted. But she gets the best line in the picture, when Tatum is demanding she go to early mass every day and play the grieving wife. “I don’t go to church,” she tells him. “Kneeling bags my nylons.”
There’s also a great country song written for the occasion by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans and performed by Bill Ramsey & the Rythem [sic, per IMDb] Wranglers, “We’re Coming, Leo,” which goes, “While you are in the cave-in hopin’ / We are up above you gropin’ / And we soon will make an openin’,” etc.
The story, which has operated all the way like an overheating engine, notably goes over the top at the finish. Tatum’s plan to delay and draw out the rescue effort goes fatally sideways, everything is lost, too late he is full of regret and self-recriminations, and the final image is a stark close-up, arguably done better in Sunset Blvd., but adequately arresting in its own regard. If you go for that sort of thing. Ace in the Hole is all right as caustic critique but so noisy about it that it too often undermines itself. Obviously, perhaps, I need some further education or something on Kirk Douglas, as I can see that my problems with him tend to stand in for my problems with this picture at large.
No comments:
Post a Comment