It's a good story today. Tomorrow, they'll wrap a fish in it.

Ace in the Hole is directed by Billy Wilder and Wilder co-writes the screenplay with Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman and Victor Desny. It stars Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Bob Arthur, Porter Hall and Richard Benedict. Music is by Hugo Friedhofer and cinematography by Charles Lang Jr.

Chuck Tatum (Douglas) is a one time big-city journalist who is now stuck working for an out of the way Albuquerque newspaper. When on his way to another mundane reporting job he happens upon the chance to exploit a story about a man trapped in a cave to rekindle his career and put him back in the big league. However, the situation quickly escalates into an out-of-control media circus...

Inspired by the real life Floyd Collins disaster in 1925, Ace in the Hole finds Wilder on supreme acerbic and cynical form. Flopping upon release, nobody was quite ready for Wilder to paint an uncompromising portrait of the human spirit stinking to high heaven. It now holds up as one of the finest exponents of media machinations and the human fallibility that encompasses a thirst for tragedy.

Douglas leads the way with one of his finest and intensified performances, filling Chuck Tatum with a reprehensible attitude to media ladder climbing. When one witnesses the harrowing sequences as Tatum talks to the trapped Leo Minosa (Benedict tugs the heart strings), telling him it's going to be alright, we feel complicit in knowing just exactly what is going on up top. Leo adores his wife Lorraine (Sterling a splendidly subtle bitch perf hiding hollow turmoil), but she has wanted out for some time, but under Chatum's prompting she sticks around to make money on her husbands trapped suffering.

Pretty soon this one store tin-pot town is booming, tills are ringing and the papers are selling big time, the coupling of Tatum and Lorraine is a match made in hell. Dialogue is in true noir fashion often sharp and biting, even with some of Wilder's customary humour deftly tucked away. As the exploitation of the situation reaches fever pitch, and the hypocrisy of the human condition is laid bare, "Ace in the Hole" proves itself to be a pitiless story that is a compelling journey for the viewers invested in the darker shades of what Wilder was fronting. A big flip-flop for a main character's behaviour at film's end seems a little out of place, given what has preceded it, but the ending is straight out of noirville and ensures the pic is a near masterpiece from a true master of his craft. 9/10

Ace in the Hole, a film from 1951, painted a slightly exaggerated picture of a world where efforts went into making an event into a story with higher traction, long reach and as much possible limelight as it can. In 2021 with the advent of the virality of news, things have not changed a lot. Vultures, vultures everywhere.

In Albuquerque, there is a cave-in. A man was in there in search of ancient Indian artefacts and is now stuck under the ruble. The protagonist Chuck Tatum is a disgraced news reporter in search of a breaking story to make it back in the big leagues. He sees an opportunity in this 'event' and decides to turn it into a human interest story.

I am reminded of an event back in 2006 in India where a young kid fell in the borewell tube. This was a big news opportunity of that time. There was a live coverage and all. It was definitely a human interest story. I still remember that coverage now in 2021 which goes on to say how widely it was covered. The events and the coverage depicted in the film are all too plausible, but the exaggeration of the later part feels like cinematic liberty. If you take this as metaphorical hype then it would be permissible. Interestingly, the criticism when it released showed how the perversion of journalistic practices was a bit too much to handle for critics of 1951. Many channels today have surpassed the selfish and greedy levels depicted in the film.

Lorraine Minosa's arc adds a bit more drama which is not really needed. She is a strong character. Keeping her in love with her husband would have added a much-needed weight on the other side of Chuck Tatum. That would have balanced the film's power dynamic. As it stands right now, Chuck Tatum steamrolls everything. Kirk Douglas has given a powerful high octane performance. His delivery is sharp and packs a punch. Probably for the message director is going for, this one-sided aggression works better.

I also loved the writing in the film. I have rarely seen minimum words with maximum impact as the dialogues from Ace in the Hole delivered with gusto.

> "Human interest. You pick up the paper, you read about 84 men or 284, or a million men, like in a Chinese famine. You read it, but it doesn't stay with you. One man's different, you want to know all about him. That's human interest."

Although the context is vastly different, this feels like a precursor to the Joker's quote from The Dark Knight.

I have not seen a lot of old films, but after seeing this, I think the craft was much more hard-hitting during those days. We have all the tech/CGI wizardry and polish now, but characters like Chuck Tatum or even like the Jacob Q. Boot linger over long after the credits roll.

I was going through a list of the 100 greatest American films by culture magazine, and this features 100th on it, and also features 385th on Empire magazine's top 500. Accolades well deserved. Recommended.