Movie of the Week: ACE IN THE HOLE

Poorly received in its time in spite of earning directing plaudits for Billy Wilder at the Venice Film Festival, ACE IN THE HOLE [1951] remains an unsparing critique of American culture as embodied by Kirk Douglas‘s ambitious, unscrupulous reporter and the media circus he gins up to salvage his dead-ended career. Too accurate and prescient to be entirely dismissed as a work of cynicism, a particularly brutal grotesque for a filmmaker known for brutal grotesques, ACE IN THE HOLE’s reputation was built over the years first as a cult classic and the film is now wildly acclaimed as a brilliant satire on moral corruption.

ACE IN THE HOLE is screening as part of a month-long series, “The Newspaper Picture.”

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“… a punch in the gut, a kick in the nuts, a bucket of bile flung in the face. … a movie so acidly au courant it stings: a lurid pulp indictment of exploitation, opportunism, doctored intelligence, torture for profit, insatiable greed, and shady journalism.”
– Nathan Lee, VILLAGE VOICE

“Billy Wilder being bitter, without Billy Wilder being funny. This 1951 film, about a cynical reporter who seizes on the plight of a man trapped in a mine shaft to promote his career, is cold, lurid, and fascinating, propelled by the same combination of moral outrage and sneaky admiration that animates the paperback novels of Jim Thompson and James M. Cain. Kirk Douglas stars, and his psychotic charm is perfect for the part; Jan Sterling is unforgettable as the victim’s hard-bitten wife, who’s willing to go along with Douglas’s scheme.”
– Dave Kehr, CHICAGO READER

“Wilder, true to this vision and ahead of his time, made a movie in which the only good men are the victim and his doctor. Instead of blaming the journalist who masterminds a media circus, he is equally hard on sightseers who pay 25 cents admission. Nobody gets off the hook here. … There’s not a wasted shot in Wilder’s film, which is single-mindedly economical. Students of Arthur Schmidt’s editing could learn from the way every shot does its duty. There’s not even a gratuitous reaction shot. The black-and-white cinematography by Charles Lang is the inevitable choice; this story would curdle color. And notice how no time is wasted with needless exposition. A wire-service ticker turns up there, again without comment. A press tent goes up and speaks for itself. … it still has all its power. ”
– Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

“ACE IN THE HOLE was to be Wilder’s attempt to make a personal film. It remains an extraordinary movie to emerge from a major studio during the period. … Far from the boudoir innuendoes of 1930s Brackett-Wilder collaborations, ACE IN THE HOLE was symptomatic of a taste for brutal modernity manifest in Wilder’s work since before even DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944). Embodied in Tatum is the ruthless ambition of a society heading for international hegemony as it broke the back of what it had gladly dubbed the ‘American Century.’ By 1950 the suburban American population had grown to 20,872,000, while New York had overtaken London as the world’s leading financial centre. Leaving the soporific crowd in his dust, the pugnacious Tatum evokes New York at a particularly triumphant post-war moment.”
– Richard Armstrong, SENSES OF CINEMA

WHAT: ACE IN THE HOLE

WHEN: Friday, April 9 at 7:40 PM with introduction by Brooke Gladstone, co-host of NPR’s ON THE MEDIA (additional showtimes Friday and Saturday)
WHERE: Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street (New York City, NY)