8pm PST – Ace In the Hole (1951) – A small-town reporter milks a local disaster to get back into the big time. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Bob Arthur, Porter Hall Dir: Billy Wilder BW-111 mins, TV-14
Billy Wilder’s blistering look at the dark underside of journalism is just starting to get the recognition it deserves. When released it probably came off a little cynical, but in this era of Big Media undermining our troops at every opportunity, watching a reporter risk a man’s life to get back in the big time, doesn’t feel at all far-fetched.
Released against Wilder’s will as “The Big Carnival,” the biggest compliment one can make to the writer/director is that his superb work here could easily be confused with something helmed by Elia Kazan. There’s a noirish sensibility to the look and Kirk Douglas’s intense, relentless lead performance would feel out of place among Wilder’s better known films.
The dialogue is top-notch, with most of the best lines going to Jan Sterling’s Lorraine, an embittered local who sees in Douglas a way out of her dusty, dull circumstances:
“I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you – you’re twenty minutes.”
That’s writing.
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