DVD Tuesday: Ace in the Hole and Tabloid Trash
Ace in the Hole courtesy Criterion Collection
DVD Tuesday: Ace in the Hole lays into the public appetite for sensation and the tabloid media machine that feeds it - 55 years later, nothing has changed.
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As soon as I got my first VCR, I began waiting for
Billy Wilder's lacerating
Ace in the Hole (1951) to come out on video. Never happened. And why it's taken so long to come to DVD when you can choose from multiple editions of all manner of junk is one of life's little mysteries. But it's finally here, courtesy of the Criterion Collection, so goodbye combing listings for the rare TV showing or ponying up for someone else's made-from-TV bootleg!
The anti-hero of
Ace in the Hole, which was also released as
The Big Carnival and tanked under both titles, is Charles Tatum (
Kirk Douglas), a bastard of a disgraced big-city newspaperman looking for a way back into the game. He finds it in New Mexico when he stumbles across a "human-interest story" (the film's working title) he thinks he can spin into a Pulitzer Prize: Leo Minosa, owner of a godforsaken cafe/souvenir shop in the middle of sunbaked nowhere, is trapped in the abandoned mine where he was digging for Indian artifacts.
Tatum allies himself with the local sheriff, who's running for reelection and knows the value of publicity; he promises to keep all other reporters away from Leo and bullies the contractor hired to dig Leo out into choosing a route that will take six days rather than the one that would have the man out in a matter of hours. The only thing better than an exclusive is an exclusive with legs. Tatum beefs up his dispatches with rumors of vengeful Indian spirits and tributes to the quiet devotion of Leo's wife, Lorraine (
Jan Sterling), a restless, hard-faced chippie who couldn't care less about her loser of a husband. Her response when Tatum tells her it would look good if she dressed up and went to church to pray for Leo: "I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons." Tatum even crawls into the cave and strikes up a friendship with the increasingly desperate Leo, whose condition deteriorates rapidly as he lies in the cold, dusty darkness, legs pinned under a fallen beam. Tatum's stories bring other reporters, print and radio. Vacationers detour to the site with their kids (it could be an educational experience, one couple explains) and sensation seekers make special trips to gape; the cafe flourishes and carnies set up a Ferris wheel and concessions right outside the cave. The term "media circus" has never been more vividly realized.
Critics didn't like
Ace in the Hole - they called it cynical, sordid and preposterous. Now it just looks clear-eyed and unforgiving. Made more than half a century ago,
Ace in the Hole remains sharper than most newer movies that tackle similar material, including
15 Minutes (2001),
The Paper (1994) and
Mad City (1997) - which owes
Ace in the Hole a
massive debt of inspiration. Few equal it:
Network (1976) comes to mind. The genius of
Ace in the Hole - which was inspired by the real-life 1925 case of caver
Floyd Collins and cowritten by Wilder, Walter Newman and Lesser Samuels - is that it's not just press bashing: Tatum is just part of a larger picture and Wilder was never a great believer in the goodness of human nature - William Holden, who starred in his
Stalag 17 (1953), said Wilder had "a mind full of razor blades." And forget every goofy imitation of Kirk Douglas you've ever seen: His Tatum is the performance of a lifetime - selfish, manipulative, condescending, two-faced, utterly ruthless and terrifically good at what he does. Any journalist knows the truth of Tatum's mantra: "Bad news sells best... good news is no news."
Things to consider:
I devoted a chapter of
Movie Lust ("Scoop Dreams") to films about the press - do you have any favorites?
Do you read or watch lurid coverage of murders, war atrocities, sex scandals? Do you or don't you feel bad about indulging morbid curiosity about the misfortunes of others?
Is that fascination just part of human nature? After all, the minute there were printing presses, there were scandal sheets.
What's your overall feeling about journalists and journalism, and do you think there's a fundamental difference between, say, a political reporter for the
Wall Street Journal and a reporter covering the celebrity beat for
The Star?
Previously in DVD Tuesday:
Eyes Without a Face
Apocalypto
Citizen Kane
La Jetée
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Bob le Flambeur
Near Dark
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! - Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also:
This week's new DVD releases
