TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES
From our Correspondent |
Ace in the Hole
Billy Wilder
1951 - United States - 1h51
Charles Tatum, a journalist ostracised by his peers, finds a job in the local paper of a town in New Mexico. A year later, while still dreaming of finding a subject that would enable him to work for a major magazine again, an unexpected opportunity arises…
Of all the films he made, Ace in the Hole was Billy Wilder's favourite. It was also his darkest, with, at its centre, Kirk Douglas who was perfect as a pushy and manipulative anti-hero. Director and actor, his character studies his subject, surrounds himself with people who enable him to carry out his project as he sees fit and plays to a huge crowd. To achieve his aims, he exposes human suffering, exaggerates reality in terms spectacle and flatters the audience's basest instincts. This portrait of the post-war United States as a land of tainted leisure was Wilder's first public failure. The film is inspired by tragic events remembered by Wilder, and also his own experiences as a journalist “human interest news”, in 1925, firstly in Vienna and then in Berlin …
CAST AND CREW
Cast : Kirk Douglas , Jan Sterling , Robert Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady, Richard Benedict, Ray Teal, Lewis Martin
Screenplay : Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman
Cinematography : Charles Lang
Sound : Gene Garvin, Harold Lewis
Editing : Arthur P. Schmidt
Music : Hugo Friedhofer
Production : Paramount Pictures
French distributor : Swashbuckler Films