Ace in the Hole - Criterion Collection
by Billy Wilder
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DVD details
Actor: Kirk DouglasDirector: Billy Wilder
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; Latin (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 111 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-07-17
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Ace in the Hole - Criterion Collection
DVD Review: Another Great Transfer Of A Classic-Era Film
Summary: 4 Stars
This hard-to-see film finally came to TCM in 2007 and then to DVD a short while later in the year, pleasing a lot of classic film and film noir fans. Criterion does its normal job of giving us a superb transfer. Yes, their discs are expensive, but you get what you pay for, usually. It's especially good to get well-photographed films like this looking sharp on our TVs.
As for the story, I found the fist hour to be riveting with crisp dialog, interesting characters, and some nice camera shots by director Billy Wilder and photographer Charles Lang. Kirk Douglas was intense as "Chuck Tatum" and Jan Sterling ("Lorraine Minosa") was pure film-noir platinum blonde with attitude.
Then, the next 40-45 minutes disappointed me, to be frank. Tatum slowly softens to the point where the film loses its edge, going from an adventure story-film noir to more of a melodrama. Sterling's character almost disappears from the screen, which doesn't help. However, with 10 minutes left in the film, a shocking scene with her jolted me back to full attention.
The acting is superb, not just with the two leads but with all the supporting actors, led by Porter Hall, who played the newspaper editor "Jacob Boot." I also appreciated the sarcastic comedy in here as Wilder and the screenwriters parody the "carnival" atmosphere which develops when a tragedy occurs and people make a financial profit out of it. As the days linger on and the man in this story clings to his life trapped deep in a mine, the circus atmosphere grows. Hence, the second title of this film: "The Big Carnival."
That latter title was used when the film bombed at the box office in America the first time it was shown. Later, it was reissued under that second title. It still bombed. However, today it seems to be getting cult status.
DVD Review: Review The Product Please...
Summary: 5 Stars
What is it with all you wannabe movie reviewers? I had to sludge through 3 pages of story lines for the ENTIRE film just to find someone who took a moment to write what was on the bonus disc, which is what I was after. Thank you to THAT guy. The rest of you... jeez, do you really think your insight is SO valuable that you have to write the 75th detailed review? DVD Review: AWESOME MOVIE! WORTH BUYING
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of my favorite movies of all time!
How innovative and cutting edge this film
was for its time. Although it was made in 1951,
the main topic discussed is very true for today's
media. Great film overall! Current films look
terrible compared to this movie. I would highly
suggest everyone see it. I'm 18 and this is
one of my favorite movies ever.
DVD Review: Darker, More Cynical but Slightly Less Deft Than 'Sunset'
Summary: 4 Stars
After a long wait for the Criterion edition of 'Ace in the Hole', I must say that I am not disappointed.
As a follow-up to the quintessential Wilder film, 'Sunset Boulevard', 'Ace' works well as a companion piece. But the message is also more poignant and universal than in 'Sunset'. 'Ace' is all about greed and hubris. This is fairly obvious but what strikes me the most is the incredible visual symbolism of such themes (the constant tightening of the hole in the cave throughout the film and the 'headline' in the closing shot of the film). For a script that was uncompleted before Wilder finished shooting, the story is well structured and thematically consistent.
That being said, I got the feeling that the last third of the movie was written on the fly. The film is still thematically correct but the climax was somewhat predictable nevertheless. Some of these notions are touched on, with much verve, in the Criterion edition's commentary. I must agree to some degree because I felt similar to the commentator when I first viewed the film (w/o commentary).
Despite these minor setbacks, the film is otherwise masterful, filled with Wilder's virtuoso dialogue and camera (Wilder isn't noted as being particularly fancy with the camera, but this film has plenty of shots that call attention to the story and it's themes). 'Ace in the Hole' is truly a lost masterpiece from a prolific and legendary film maker. Not to be missed!
DVD Review: See Kirk Douglas act like a total ace-hole!
Summary: 5 Stars
In 1950 Billy Wilder was riding high. Fresh off the enormously successful Sunset Boulevard, the German-born Wilder decided to make a very different film; one somewhat critical of the society of his new home, the United States. That film was called Ace in the Hole.
The movie concerns Kirk Douglas as a down-on-his-luck reporter who has been fired from just about every major newspaper in the country. Starting with New York, he's gone from large market to small, and now has ended up in Alberquerque. He's a self-described $250 a week reporter, but settles for $60 a week, and makes it clear at one point he'd be willing to take even less.
But his character, Chuck Tatum, has dreams. Yes, he does. He dreams that one day, the Great Story will drop into his lap. A story that will let him write his way out of the situation he's in, one that will let him write his own ticket and get back to New York.
That Great Story drops into his lap one day when, while on the way to cover a rattlesnake hunt, he stops at a gas station and finds out there's a man trapped in a nearby cave. He boldly goes into the gave, meets Leo Mimosa (Richard Benedict), the man trapped inside, and smells a story.
Immediately he begins to sabotage the rescue efforts. When the engineer in charge of getting Mimosa out explains that it might take most of a day to get him out safely, Tatum conconcts a much more convulted rescue plan, one that will certainly take days. Days during which he can write a great story about this poor man trapped in a mountin. A story that will finally take him back to New York.
Along the way he meets the slightly corrupt sheriff (Ray Teal), who is more-than-willing to help him, figuring the attention boosts his chances of getting relected. Also present is Mimosa's wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling), who can't stand her husband and wants to leave. Tatum practically forces her to remain, saying the story works so much better if there's a grieving wife at home for him to focus on.
As the days roll past, people begin to show up. First just a family on their way to a nice vaction, who end up settling in for the long haul. Before you know it, the entire area is filled with cars, as people come from miles around to witness this great story. Eventually a large carnvial builds up around the site (in fact the movie was, at one point, called The Big Carnival). Access to the cave area, once free, goes from 25 cents a car to 50 cents, and then to a dollar. The gas station is making money hand over fist. Tatum is being courted by New York. Everyone is benefiting. Everyone but Leo.
Things begin to change in the life of everyone involved, including Tatum, when Leo starts to get sicker and sicker. Tatum quickly realizes the story doesn't work if the man in the cave doesn't make it out alive, and starts to try and change his tactics, only to find out that it might be too late.
The story is based to a great extent on real-life events in 1925, when a man named Floyd Collins became trapped in a mine. It also put me in mind of those stories back in the late 80's and early 90's, where it seemed like every week some kid was getting trapped in a well. If nothing else, this movie shows well that the media circus that errupted around those wells was little different from what has gone before.
When the movie was released, it was largely panned. Many people seemed to think it was overly-cynical and presented an image of America as it wasn't. The film also failed miserably at the box office. It did get an Oscar nomination, for the screenplay, but lost. Most people today have never even heard of the film, and that's a tragedy.
The movie was recently released on DVD by the Criterion Collection and turns up on Turner Classic Movies from time-to-time. It's an exceptional film, with stunning cinematography, great performances and a wonderful screenplay. It feels amazingly modern despite being 57 years old.
Roger Ebert said of this movie:
"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."
He's exactly correct. The public that eats up these stories is every bit as culpable as the journalists who create them. If we ignore these stories, they'll go away. Instead the public lavishes attention onto them, encouraging the worst in journalism. On the plus side, at least in this case, it makes for a wonderful, if sometimes hard to watch, film.
Description of Ace in the Hole - Criterion Collection
One of the most scathing indictments of American culture ever produced by a Hollywood filmmaker, Academy Award-winner Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole is legendary for both its cutting social critique and its status as a hard-to-find cult classic. Kirk Douglas gives the fiercest performance of his career as Chuck Tatum, an amoral newspaper reporter caught in dead-end Albuquerque who happens upon the story of a lifetime-and will do anything to ensure he gets the scoop. Wilder's follow-up to Sunset Boulevard is an even darker vision, a no-holds-barred expose that anticipated the rise of the American media circus.The character of newspaperman Chuck Taylor (Kirk Douglas) is best summed up by an astonished bystander (herself no soft touch): "I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my time, but you--you're 20 minutes!" Meet the "hero" of Billy Wilder's corrosive 1951 classic Ace in the Hole (a.k.a. The Big Carnival), a former big-time reporter whose reputation is so tarnished he's now at an Albuquerque rag, chasing down local-interest stuff. Until, that is, a local miner gets stuck in a cave--a situation that Taylor not only exploits but actually manipulates, the better to improve his career chances. Wilder got the idea for the movie from the real-life media circus that followed the Floyd Collins story (Collins was trapped in a cave for over a week in 1925). Needless to say, the opportunities for displaying greed and venality are fully drawn out by Wilder; indeed, the film looks unbelievably prescient from a modern perspective of media overload.
Although Wilder had scored a success with Sunset Boulevard just a year earlier, he misread the public's ability to stare into the merciless mirror he held up to them in Ace in the Hole. The movie bombed. Paramount changed the title to The Big Carnival, thus wrecking one of Wilder's most acidic puns, but it didn't help. It also doesn't matter: Ace in the Hole is one of the truly grown-up movies of its time, and age has only improved it. Wilder's ear for cynical dialogue is honed to its sharpest point, and Kirk Douglas has one of his best parts, which he attacks with customary ferocity. Jan Sterling plays the hard-nosed wife of the trapped man, with Porter Hall as Douglas's publisher--the lone voice of decency in the film's cruel parade. Admirably, Wilder takes this all the way down the line: the ending of the movie might be the best in-your-face finish since Public Enemy. --Robert Horton
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