Ace in the Hole
1951 Directed by Billy Wilder
Synopsis
A frustrated former big-city journalist now stuck working for an Albuquerque newspaper exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career, but the situation quickly escalates into an out-of-control media circus.
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"You wanna know sumthin'? He don't like you."
"And here I was gonna propose to him…"
#4 on Berken's Favorite Movies Of All TimeLike his own Sunset Boulevard a year earlier, Billy Wilder's Ace In The Hole is first and foremost a dark character study and second, a cynical satire of an American institution - in this case, the news media. Unlike Sunset Boulevard, however, I knew Ace In The Hole's scenario was right up my alley within ten minutes. Well-defined, charismatic lead? Check. Equally well-defined goal that gives us something to root for? Check. Moral gray area that gives us reason for pause? Check. Non-stop witty repartee? Check. Characters of differing viewpoints as a source for ample conflict?…
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For the longest time I have avoided Billy Wilder films because the associated labels of 'American' and 'classic' make me think 'predictable'. After watching The Apartment and now Ace in the Hole I feel my rash assumptions have some ground.
In my opinion, the best films keep themselves one step ahead of me. I want to be surprised, to be led on, so if I can see the developments of a movie from a mile away then the effect will be lost, which causes the whole thing to collapse.
I really wonder if anyone watched this film and did not predict Tatum's (Douglas) character arc?
It was so blatantly obvious from the moment the story kicks in that for the…
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Very good flick. Tense and exciting, but I was still expecting more (and it has been overshadowed by a similar 50's thriller that I watched the day after this. review coming).
Ace in the Hole is all Kirk Douglas. Yes, it's a Billy Wilder film, but it's all about Kirk. He plays a newspaper man down on his luck, looking for a big story to get back to one of the big city papers. I didn't find the themes of the film particularly interesting, but reading through some other Letterboxd reviews has be scratching my head. I see lots of praise combined with common keywords like "cynical" and "dark". There is also a legend created out of Douglas' performance/character. Reading…
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An angry, powerful gut-punch of a film. Should be mandatory viewing for any journalist.
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Every time I sit down to watch a film categorized as noir, I'm hoping for a movie just like Ice in the Hole.
A dirty and cynical journalist capable of anything to make his big shot is the protagonist, he's living in the country and working for a local newspaper for far too long and now he's bored with it. A man trapped in a "cursed" mountain is his ace in the hole. The man can be saved in 16 hours, but this ain't enough to make this story big, the press needs 7 days and for that they'll do anything.
Ace in the Hole is mainly about egoism and it spreads the guilt everywhere, from Mr. and Mrs. American…
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As with the majority of Billy Wilder films the dialogues fantastic.
Half way through Ace in the Hole Jan Sterling who plays 'fretting wife' Lorraine Minosa delivers the classic line to KIrk Douglas, the hard nose, hardheaded hack Chuck Tatum " I've met some hard boiled eggs in my time, but you... you're twenty minutes."
I'm slowly coming around to the view that Billy Wilder was the best film maker, director, screenwriter of them all.
His record would certainly suggest so. Winner of 6 Oscars, eight nominations for Academy Award for Best Director, he directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances, nominated for the Academy Award twelve times in the Best Screenplay category.
Certainly no one around today who is as consistently brilliant in everything they produce (arguably) Although I wouldn't expect Christopher Nolan or Spielberg fans to agree.
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The dialogue in the first 15 minutes of this film is so deliciously snappy that you'll think the script was written by Walter Neff and Phyllis Detrichson.
This is one of the roles I'd point to if someone asks me "What was so special about that Kirk Douglas guy, anyway?" It's a big, mugging, god-damn-it-I'm-awesome kind of a performance. He even, for no real reason, does a scene topless. That's just how he rolled. Sure, he hams it up like Porky, but is there another actor who could have hammed this role better? Here, Douglas shows that sometimes you can get away with casting a really good actor in a lead part, but, sometimes having a real, honest-to-goodness movie star on the job makes all the difference.
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para la colección de películas donde alguien se come un taco.
y para la colección de protagonistas insufribles –que despiertan alguna simpatía.
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Writing a piece for Bright Wall/Dark Room. One of my favourite films
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Very good flick. Tense and exciting, but I was still expecting more (and it has been overshadowed by a similar 50's thriller that I watched the day after this. review coming).
Ace in the Hole is all Kirk Douglas. Yes, it's a Billy Wilder film, but it's all about Kirk. He plays a newspaper man down on his luck, looking for a big story to get back to one of the big city papers. I didn't find the themes of the film particularly interesting, but reading through some other Letterboxd reviews has be scratching my head. I see lots of praise combined with common keywords like "cynical" and "dark". There is also a legend created out of Douglas' performance/character. Reading…
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"I've met some hard-boiled eggs in my time but you... you're twenty minutes"
Kirk Douglas plays the tough, cynical, difficult news reporter who accidentally stumbles on his next big story when driving through new Mexico after been driven out of all the major news agencies. The story of a man trapped in a cave in the middle of the desert isn't much of a story so Douglas desperately tries to make it bigger with the duplicitous -but unspoken- conspiratorial help of the mans wife, town sheriff and, most scathing of all, 'Mr and Mrs America', regardless of the trapped man's welfare.
One of the greatest screenplays ever committed to film was, famously, too dark and cynical for a 1950s audience and flopped at the box-office becoming something a cult film due to it's ahead-of-its-time social comment and pre-DVD unavailability.
This is a genuine classic, with brilliant sharp quotable dialogue, which demands repeat viewings. -
Wow.
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There are unsympathetic protagonists, and then there's ACE IN THE HOLE's Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas).
A hugely egocentric star reporter who's been fired from a series of big city newspapers for various reasons, Tatum is now mired in a dead-end job at a tiny newspaper in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When a miner (Richard Benedict) gets trapped in a cave-in nearby, he seizes on the opportunity for attention. Hoping to restart his career and jump back into the major leagues, he exploits the story for all it's worth, until it expands into an all-out circus of vulture-like reporters and rubbernecking tourists, camped out on the mountainside. Everyone wants a piece of the sensationalistic pie, and it doesn't take long before hardly…
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Compelling drama about notoriety, headlines, fame, and success in the post war era United States.
Douglas epitomizes a man in pursuit of some type of American Dream. More and more it seems like a clear example about what the remainder of the 20th Century would focus on, success over empathy.
Also, finally understand the early Simpsons episode "Radio Bart" in a much better context.
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A vision of news media and popular culture so cynical as to inspire awe. I don't know enough about print media then to know how true an indictment this was of its era, but watching it for the first time in 2013 gives it an eerily prophetic tone. It's painful to see something so scathing, but Wilder and Douglas give this an almost Shakespearean quality: MACBETH with mining operations.