Movie 4 d week : Ace in the Hole (1951)

Language : English

Director : Billy Wilder

Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) is a journalist who has been sacked from various jobs, admittedly for adultery, slander, drinking on the job and other such offenses. This brings him from New York to old town Albuquerque. He is forced to undersell himself to the ‘Albuquerque Sun Bulletin’ a local daily. After spending a first few inconsequential days with the daily Chuck chances on a story where a man, Leo Minosa, is stuck inside a mine. Leo Minosa is covered until his hip in soil and rocks that has crashed down on him. Chuck rakes up the big story with a ‘human-interest element’ and adequate amounts of intrigue. He gets the local Sheriff on his side with the bait that this could just help re-elect him. He would go on to use the Sheriff’s backing to have exclusive access to Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), and also gets the mine expert to drill through the rocks, rather than shore up (quoting verbatim there), so the story lasts long enough to become an interesting story. The story is not good enough if they are able to rescue Leo Minosa in a day. The media lands up and soon the whole place is flooded with them and tourists who all want to be part of the circus. And with this Lorraine (Jan Sterling), Leo Minosa’s wife, who is running a small restaurant also benefits from the circus and harbours hopes of tagging along with Chuck to New York City. She is not particularly bothered about her husband who is stuck below all the rubble. Gradually Chuck realizes his folly and decides to shore up so Leo Minosa can be rescued just in time. But then, shoring up is no longer an option after five days of drilling as the soil would then cave in. Leo Minosa dies before they can drill their way to him. Chuck announces “Leo Minosa is dead. Now go home all of you. The circus is over.” Chuck famously says “A human-interest story needs a human-interest ending” which he doesn’t get. Instead Chuck is stabbed by Lorraine and succumbs to his injury.The drilling sound has been used to put us in place of Leo Minosa inside the cave and the trauma that he is going through is communicated very effectively.

Switch on any channel today and the media circus is there for you to see. Hats off to Billy Wilder for predicting way back then the media circus.

Other must watch films of Billy Wilder include ‘Stalag 17’ (my favourite and my pick as the best war film), ‘Irma la douce’, ‘Love in the afternoon’, ‘The Seven year itch’, ‘Double Indemnity’(I think Mahesh Bhatt made a version of this) etc.

Peepli [Live] is ‘inspired’ but a good adaptation unlike the more blatant scene by scene lifts ‘Bheja Fry’ (‘Dinner Game’), ‘Dil Kabaddi’ (‘Deconstructing Harry’ or was it ‘Husbands and wives’ scene by scene), etc etc. I could go on and on. Peepli [Live] is about the media circus rather than the issue of farmer suicides. But then how else can you bring it to the notice of the public? They have used the media and the media circus pretty well to promote the film. On the Hindi / Bollywood movie scale I thought this was a very good film. Shalini and Omkar are here to stay. Raghuvir Yadav has done his fast-walking stuff earlier. Naseeruddin Shah seems to love wasting himself in roles like this and ‘Rajneeti’. Worth a watch this debut by Anusha Rizvi. ‘Udaan’ is still my pick for the best film of the year. Just picked up the DVD. Also picked up ‘Leaving Home’, the definitive film on ‘Indian Ocean’. Both are must haves in your collection.

And I hope all of you heard about the joke that is the National Awards. I do like Amitabh Bachan but not any of the films he won awards for. When will we grow out of ‘Bollywood = National films’. I must say Bengali films and Malayam films have reached the current state of affairs (read pathetic) thanks to representation by default at most Awards. I haven’t watched ‘Kuttisraank’ yet but I sure hope to soon. I love Shaji films ‘Piravi’, ‘Vanaprastham’, ‘Aravindan’ (An FD film). Hope to watch ‘Swam/Swaham’ this week. Loved revisiting ‘Night and fog’ and ‘Hour of the Furnaces’ (what a film). also watched ‘Rice People’ but wasn’t too impressed.

I was at a talk by Chandrashekar Hariharan, where he said these days people “Read Television and watch the newspaper”. J. I don’t remember a time maybe 5 years back when an Ash- Abhishek wedding or a Rakhi Sawant story could make it to the front pages. Sadly ‘Entertainment’ (read Gossip, Trash etc) has replaced ‘News’.

Useless trivia : ‘Ace in the hole’ was released as ‘The Big Carnival’, apparently without Billy Wilder’s knowledge. The film was a critical and a commercial failure when released. The title was changed back to ‘Ace in the hole’ when released by The Criterion Collection. During its time the film was trashed as ‘naïve, grotesque, absurd…’ The same media has since hailed it as a classic.

Viktor Desny sued Billy Wilder claiming it was an unauthorized version of the Floyd Collins story, which he owned rights to. Billy Wilder had to pay Desny a settlement amount.