Ace in the Hole

Charlie Tatum (Kirk Douglas) is a disgraced New York journalist who winds up at an Albuquerque, New Mexico newspaper.  He is determined to catch his big break but is stuck covering local feature stories.  He gets assigned to a local rattlesnake hunt, but when he and the young photographer stop at an Indian Curio shop, he discovers that the owner is trapped in a mine while searching for Indian artifacts.  The owner's wife (Jan Sterling) decides it's a good time to pack her bags and leave, but Charlie thinks this story will be his big break.

He convinces the wife to stay, since he feels once the story breaks the shop will be innundated with tourists.  He also connives the corrupt sheriff into not allowing any other press into the location.  Once the tourists do show up, the scene turns into a literal media circus.  Intent to get the best story possible, Charlie even convinces the local contractor to not go through the entrance and shore up the rock (which would get the victim out in a few hours) but to drill through the top of the mountain, thereby extending the rescue by several days.

This is a forgotten masterpiece by Billy Wilder that has been thankfully restored by the Criterion collection.  And what a masterpiece it is!  Filmed in 1951, it is an eerily prescient view of the power of media.  "Media Circus" is what the rescue literally becomes...the free admission to the mine becomes a 25 cent admission, and then, once the amusement trucks bring in circus tents and a ferris wheel (!) it is raised to a dollar admission.  And to think this was filmed over 50 years before CNN!

The acting is superb.  Kirk Douglas delivers one of his most infamous roles.  His Tatum is the most amoral, manipulative character in film, and Jan Sterling equals him in her greed and indifference to the husband she wants to leave in the cave.

Although many scenes are filmed in the bright New Mexico sun, this is definitely a film noir: there are few characters of redeeming value, and the scenes in the mine are dark and claustrophobic.  And the ending is as bleak as can be.

Thanks to our friends Ron and Sandy and their son Corey for loaning this to us.  I had never heard of this one before (the movie was originally a flop at the box office,) but was curious after I read that Criterion was re-releasing it.  And what a release it is!  The film is beautifully restored, and the packaging is outstanding (the inside liner notes are in the form of the Albuquerque newspaper, complete with ads for the Curio shop and the re-election of the sheriff!)   

A long lost classic.  This is one of the most important American films ever made.