Ace in the Hole

Ace in the Hole (1951) is set in New Mexico. A reporter sacked from the big papers is working on a small local one and waiting for a story. When a man is trapped under rock in a cave he sees his chance: stretch the rescue and you stretch the story. A carnival goes up around the cave mouth. Two real cases feed it. In 1925 Floyd Collins was trapped in a cave in Kentucky, and the reporting of William Burke Miller became a national event and won a Pulitzer. The second is the Kathy Fiscus well incident of 1949. In both, the victim died before rescue. The release was a disaster. It flopped commercially and critics disliked it; Bosley Crowther found it dramatically implausible and The Hollywood Reporter called it ruthless and cynical. Paramount executive Y. Frank Freeman changed the title to The Big Carnival before release, on his own and without Billy Wilder's approval. The verdict reversed over the years. Roger Ebert called it timeless, and the film entered the National Film Registry in 2017. Kirk Douglas plays the reporter and the character is never given a moment of softening. It runs 112 minutes. Good for: a critique of journalism, film noir, and the hardest thing Wilder made. Less good for: the film offers no consolation about people and nearly everyone in it is working an angle. The one significant woman is written with a single motivation. The ending is abrupt and hopeless.