37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Billy Wilder's Masterpieces, May 3, 2007
This 1951 film seems as relevant today as it ever did. Kirk Douglas is perfectly cast as an unethical newspaper reporter who, through his influence over the town's sheriff, keeps a dying man trapped in a mine for several days longer than necessary in order to milk the story for all it's worth - a strategy he hopes will help him claw his way back to the top of the journalistic world. Billy Wilder's incredibly vitriolic film tells many truths about how reality is manipulated by the media to serve personal and political ends without regard to the suffering caused by this agenda. His film spares nobody in its critique: those who perpetuate the lies, those who directly benefit from them, even those who uncritically consume the stories are all complicit in the wrongdoing. Wilder made many great films, most of which are far better known than this one, but "Ace in the Hole" is up there with the best of them.
Criterion's release of this film is definitely cause for celebration.
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A neglected masterpiece! Available at last!, July 27, 2002
ACE IN THE HOLE (the studio renamed THE BIG CARNIVAL when it bombed upon rerelease) is Billy Wilder's forgotten masterpiece. Along with Ernst Lubitsch's ONE HOUR WITH YOU and the films of British comic Will Hay, this has long topped my own personal wish list of films that have never been available either on DVD or VHS in the United States (Hay's films are at least available on DVD in Great Britain). To have it appear at last not only on DVD but in a two-disc Criterion edition is truly a wish come true. This will easily go down as one of the most important DVD releases of 2007.
This is among Billy Wilder's greatest films, though this has been long forgotten because the film bombed so badly at the box office (financially it was by far Wilder's worst film, lossing a great deal of money). Anyone who has seen many Billy Wilder films knows that he had a dark side and that while he would turn out many of the greatest comedies in the history of film, he could also turn out some of the bleakest films ever made. Moreover, even some of his comedies contain many cynical elements. ACE IN THE HOLE is the most despairing film Bill Wilder ever made.
The plot is simple. A former ace reporter is so far down on his luck that he has taken a job on a tiny New Mexico newspaper. When a man gets trapped in a mine collapse, he sees an opportunity to resurrect his career. On the inside, he crawls through the collapsed mine to the spot where the miner is trapped, interviewing him, bringing him food and water, befriending him, and giving him hope and comfort. On the outside, he has an affair with the miner's wife, writes a series of stories about the miner that creates a national media frenzy, and manipulates rescue operations to delay the man's release by a few days so that he will have more time to milk the story. The great tension in the story arrives from his cold-blooded manipulation of the man's situation on the one hand, and the enormous guilt he suffers from the expressions of friendship and appreciation from the man who is trapped. Meanwhile, outside the mine, thousands and thousands of onlookers collect, to the point where it has become a virtual city, complete with souvenir sellers and even carnival rides (hence part of the meaning of the original title).
Kirk Douglas has made very, very man great movies in his great career, but I am not sure he was ever better than in this one. Although the movie has a cast of thousands, there are only three truly crucial characters: Douglas's reporter, the man trapped in the mine, and the miner's wife. But of the three, it is Douglas who has to carry the film on his back. And he does so magnificently.
In every way, a very great movie. My hope is that it will come to be recognized as the great film it is along with other box office failures that have since come to be recognized as classics such as BRINGING UP BABY and THE GENERAL. This is a film that simply must be seen by every fan of the movies.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Neglected Classic Receives the Criterion Treatment, September 18, 2007
The audience that loved Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) turned on his "Ace in the Hole" one year later. Watch the movie and you can guess why. It was easy for middle America to enjoy a decadent Hollywood get its just desserts. When Wilder turned the mirror onto middle America itself, they didn't admire their own reflection.
"Ace in the Hole" endures, however, for some of the same reasons as Sidney Lumet's "Network" (1975): what was satire 30-50 years ago has become reality. In a world of Fox Network and 24-hour infotainment, "Ace in the Hole" is immediately recognizable and could have been filmed yesterday. It's a good thing it wasn't, because there aren't any Billy Wilders around, who directed without fussiness and wrote scripts with razor blades. As a peculiar kind of film noir, this is a movie that had to have been made in black and white. And it's hard to think of an actor in our day who could have played as well this movie's loathsome yet recognizably human lead as did the young Kirk Douglas. As with all Criterion editions, the bells and whistles glisten: particularly the film's pinpoint restoration, the commentary track, and a terrific filmed interview with Billy Wilder at the American Film Institute.
Roger Ebert has noted that, as a German emigré to the United States with the onset of World War II, Billy Wilder loved his adopted homeland but never accepted as truth America's dangerously pious myths about itself. If you leave "Ace in the Hole" angry or thinking it far-fetched, then either the movie has struck a nerve or you might begin paying closer attention.
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