ACE IN THE HOLE: Burying The Lede by M.G. Wood

Billy Wilder is the greatest American film maker. Even though Billy Wilder was born in Austria-Hungary, he made the best movies about America. No other film maker made such a wide variety of movies, film noir: DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), drama: SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950), comedy: SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), romantic comedy/drama: THE APARTMENT (1960).

Dateline 1951: streetwise reporter down on his luck shows up at a small town newspaper in New Mexico with promises of big stories and even bigger headlines, and after delivering on said promises, finds himself burying the lede: “Reporter Dies Trying To Break The Story Of His Life”.

ACE IN THE HOLE (1951) written and directed by Wilder was not a big commercial success, and watching the movie now, it’s easy to see why. Even before “everything changed” on 9/11, Americans were none too keen on self-flagellation. Few movies possess the acid cynicism that exists within ACE IN THE HOLE. This film doesn’t skewer America, this film disembowels.

Kirk Douglas plays a once big-time news reporter down on his luck after losing his lucrative job at the New York Times because he drank too much. Oh, and he slept with his editor’s wife. Douglas shows up at a small town newspaper in New Mexico in the hopes that he can slowly climb his way back up.

Clearly steeling himself for the long haul, Douglas drags the paper’s Jimmy Olsen along with him to cover a story about rattlesnakes. When Douglas and his intrepid young photographer stop to get gas at a run-down station in the desert, the kid steps inside to discover an old lady deep in prayer. The kid tells Douglas about the odd occurrence, Douglas shrugs it off, until a siren’s wail turns his head. They watch as a police car leaves a trail of dust speeding up towards a mountain in the distance. Douglas wonders if maybe that’s what the old lady is praying about.

So, Douglas and the kid photographer head up toward the mountain. They arrive at the foot of the mountain to learn that the owner of the gas station/diner from which they had just left, is trapped in a cave inside the massive mountain. Douglas suspects there’s a story here, so he volunteers to go in. Douglas finds the man, and after a short conversation, believes the man to be a man of depth. When Douglas re-emerges from the cave, he is convinced that he has the story that could win him the Pulitzer.

His Pulitzer story? A local businessman in search of Indian relics becomes entombed in what the Navajo call “The Mountain Of 7 Vultures” . Thus doomed to suffer for his desire to rape a native culture ala the curse of King Tut.

It is at this point that the trapped man ceases to be. The man is a catalyst. The man in the cave is unseen by anyone except for Douglas. So, the thousands of reporters, tourists, ambulance-chasers, and gawkers gathered outside the towering mountain, like a scene from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, never see the man inside, just the mountain that holds him.

The man’s wife is convinced by Douglas not to leave town. Douglas explains their struggling gas station/diner will soon be hoppin’. And soon enough, it is.

The local sheriff morphs into Rudy Giuliani as he sees his political prospects invigorated by the tragedy.

In Douglas’ ugliest act of manipulation, he convinces the contractor assigned to dig the poor man out, to take the long way into the cave, thus extending the drama for a few more days.

When the carnival literally comes to town, the film takes a decidedly Felliniesque turn. But, because no American film can truly be as adolescently fantastic as Fellini’s; it’s Fellini with the corroded tint of American cynicism. The original title of the film was THE BIG CARNIVAL.

ACE IN THE HOLE is now available for the first time on DVD, in a great Criterion 2-disc set. Disc one is, of course, a perfect print of the film. The highlights of the second disc are the interviews with Billy Wilder, Kirk Douglas, and Spike Lee.

Spike Lee speaks of his love for ACE IN THE HOLE, as well as the influence the film and Wilder had on him as a writer/director. Including his confessing to having re-created the final shot of ACE IN THE HOLE in MALCOLM X (not to correct the film maker himself, but I think Mr. Lee may be referring to the shot of Radio Raheem hitting the ground in DO THE RIGHT THING).

At one point, Spike Lee says he believes ACE IN THE HOLE to represent America; saying, “We Americans will do anything for a buck, even if someone has to die.”

And Lee may be right. Early in the film, as the very first couple arrives to visit “The Mountain Of 7 Vultures”, Douglas turns to the trapped man’s wife and says, “That’s Mr.and Mrs. America!”.

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