Billy Wilder, the storied director of Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend, was at the top of his game in 1951. His film, Sunset Boulevard, despite earning the ire of Hollywood insiders - MGM head honcho Louis B. Mayer suggested Wilder be tarred, feathered and horsewhipped for portraying his profession with such a jaundiced eye - was a huge hit, nominated for 11 Academy Awards, taking home three, including one for Wilder in the category of Best Writing, Story and Screenplay. Perhaps it was the success of that film, despite the backlash from the industry, which gave Wilder the courage to go ahead with a film that was sure to alienate a powerful group of Tinseltown insiders - the Hollywood press. Ace in the Hole, his scathing exposé of shady journalism, put him at odds with the frontline scribes who would write about the movie and hopefully stir up interest with audiences. Their rejection of the film doomed it to failure. "Fuck them all," Wilder said after the movie tanked. "It is the best picture I ever made." Wilder picked up the idea for Ace in the Hole from a 20-year-old radio writer named Walter Newman. Newman pitched the director a treatment called The Human Interest Story based on the 1925 case of spelunker Floyd Collins, the self-proclaimed greatest cave explorer ever known.
Collins had been investigating a Kentucky cave in hopes of turning it into a profitable tourist attraction when a 27-pound rock collapsed on his foot, trapping him in a narrow, wet hole. He remained wedged in the space for 17 days, before he succumbed to starvation and exposure. The part of the story that grabbed Newman was the media circus that grew around the event. Collins was pinned in an inaccessible fissure only 150 feet from the mouth of the cave, so he was able to banter back and forth with rescuers and journalists. William Burke "Skeets" Miller, a cub reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal played up the story in a series of dramatic articles, turning the local misfortune into a national event. His melodramatic reportage earned him a Pulitzer Prize and drew tens of thousands of people - disaster tourists - to the area, turning this unfortunate set of circumstances into the third biggest media event between the World Wars (next to Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and his son's kidnapping). In the film Kirk Douglas stars as Charles Tatum, a former ace reporter now on the skids. "I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news," he says, "I'll go out and bite a dog." Tatum has been fired fromevery major newspaper in the country, and in a desperate bid to rebuild his sidetracked career he offers his services to a small Albuquerque, New Mexico, daily. Outside the editor's office hangs an embroidered sign that reads "Tell the Truth." "Wish I could coin 'em like that," Tatum says to a secretary. "If I ever do, will you embroider it for me?"
Assigned to covering rattlesnake hunts and other small town news, one day Tatum stumbles across the story he thinks will vault him back to the big time. In the nearby Mountain of the Seven Vultures, Leo Minosa, an ex-gi, has been trapped by falling debris while hunting for artifacts. Tatum seizes the chance to cover the story, recalling another reporter who "crawled in for the story and crawled out with a Pulitzer Prize." Tatum spices the story with histrionic hokum ("Ancient Curse EntombsMan!") to create a national buzz for his scoop, but it isn't until he conspires with a corrupt sheriff (Ray Teal), the gi's wife (Jan Sterling) and a gutless contractor (Lewis Martin) to prolong the story by keeping Leo buried under the rubble that the movie reveals its true dark heart. Cynical, bitter and uncompromising, Ace in the Hole is a no-holdsbarred indictment of yellow journalism, unfettered greed, ambition and opportunism. Other films have tread the same ground, 1957's A Face in the Crowd and from 1976 Network to name a couple, but neither of those movies has the same cutting edge, the underlying flavor of arsenic. Wilder wastes no opportunity to pour vitriol on the idea that human suffering can be treated as a spectator sport. Even the carnival trailers at the scene are used as a metaphor. Their name? S&M Amusement Services.
In the lead role of Tatum, Kirk Douglas personifies ruthless ambition coupled with a complete disregard for humanity. His indifference for the safety of the trapped man is a microcosm of the larger issue regarding the warped relationship between the American media and its public. He's a sociopath who gives the people what they want - vivid human interest stories - no matter what the cost. Douglas's work here rates among his best, alongside Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory and Mark Robson's Champion for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Douglas drips with confidence, chewing up and spitting out the dialogue. In his hands Tatum is a despicable character, but he's a compelling one. When a group of big-time reporters descend on his story, trying to find a way to muzzle in on his scoop, it's a moment with the kind of zippy dialogue that could only exist in a Wilder noir - and Douglas makes the best of it. "We're all buddies in the same boat," says one frantic correspondent. "I'm in the boat. You're in the water," Tatum spits back. "Now let's see you swim, buddies."
It's great stuff and Douglas seems to relish everymanic, brutal syllable. Ace in the Hole was (predictably) beaten up by the press and despite winning an award at the Venice Film Festival, failed to find an audience in 1951. Paramount, ignoringWilder's contractual right of title and final cut, went behind his back and re-released an edited version of the film titled The Big Carnival, which didn't fare much better than the original. Disheartened by the movie's failure Wilder played it safe for the next few years, mostly adapting Broadway plays for the screen. In 1997 the film was remade as Mad City by politically charged filmmaker Costa-Gavras, but audiences didn't get a chance to see Wilder's original unsung masterpiece again until it earned a limited theatrical release in 2002. This time critics lobbed laurels at the 50-year-old film, praising its prescient view of the out-of-control tabloid media. Critical response to the re-release led to a handsome dvd package from Criterion in 2007. "It was a totally uncompromising film at a time when the movies were said to be totally compromised," wrote Maurice Zolotow in Billy Wilder in Hollywood. "It is shocking even now."
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