"Ace in the Hole"

Last night I watched Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" aka "Big Carnival" from 1951, and was amazed at how the film held up half a century later. The film was a critical and commercial bomb at the time, and for the last 50 years it has been a very hard to find cult classic on many top 100 all-time lists. Watch the film and you can understand completely why the film failed to connect. "Ace in the Hole" is a scathing indictment on the negetive powers of big media. It's no surprise that the critics felt insulted and shunned the film.

The story follows an immoral newspaper reporter named Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), who works for a small paper in New Mexico. In the middle of nowhere he stops for gas and learns of a local man recently trapped in an old mine cave in. He sets morality aside and jumps on the opportunity to exploit the situation for a major news story. Within 2 days, the entire country is following the story of the trapped man and the tiny town becomes a media circus, with thousands of reporters and people wanting to whitness the rescue first hand. Even though it's a terrible tradgedy, people in the won are reaping the benefits of all the people. A carnival even comes to town to take advantage of the people. Douglas's character controls the whole thing, and is willing to draw the situation out as long as possible by taking a round about way to rescue the man. When the trapped man dies, the whole thing crumbles. It's a prophetic tale about the power the media has to create the news, all to make a buck.

At one point Tatum states to his cameraman, "Who cares about 10,000 dead in China? People read that and pass right over.... If you want a big story, give the people an individual in crisis and tell them everything you can about the situation, then they're hooked and will buy every paper they can get thier hands on." With 100,000 killed this last week in Burma and Britney Spears constantly in the headlines, its hard not to get the point of the film. "Ace in the Hole" belongs next to "A Face in the Crowd" as 50s films with a prophetic understanding of future troubles. At the time with the rapid rise of TV and mass media, people were only beginning to understand the negetive consequences. Today, we are manipulated by the news all the time...

This is a film everyone should see. It's nearly perfect (aside from Kirk Douglas' enormous chin dimple, which dominates the movie as much as his character).

Another new image should be posted within a few days....