Billy Wilder
Ace in the hole - L'asso nella manica

Charles Chuck Tatum - Kirk Douglas is a roguish, bold, and unscrupulous journalist who, due to his vices (he's a heavy drinker and womanizer), gets fired from the most prestigious newspapers in New York, Chicago, and Detroit. 11 dismissals, to be precise.

Out of necessity, he moves to Albuquerque, a small town that is still half Indian and half Mexican and manages to get into the humble local newspaper, waiting for the chance to write an article so important that it will bring him back to the influential circles of journalism. But nothing ever happens in Albuquerque. However, one day he is sent out of town for a piece on rattlesnake hunting, and along the way, he stumbles upon a disaster: a man, a miner, searching for ancient Indian artifacts, gets trapped in a cave at the heart of a mountain, caught by a landslide. Getting him out is not easy…

Tatum smells a scoop, he got there first, he knows exactly what to do…

Ace in the Hole - L’asso nella manica, is a Billy Wilder film from '51, and it is a film far from the atmospheres of his rosy, brilliant, and frenzied comedies. It rather falls into the director's dramatic line, alongside masterpieces such as Sunset Boulevard – Viale del tramonto, released just a year earlier, and The Lost Weekend – Giorni Perduti. We can even say that his legendary comedies would arrive a few years later, in the decade between 1954 and 1964. In a way, Ace in the Hole marks the end of the first, dramatic Wilder.

What strikes is Tatum's determination and total lack of empathy and compassion, with a Kirk Douglas in outstanding form delivering a remarkable, resolute, and energetic performance. And yet, despite how clear his dark soul is, he doesn’t come across as unlikeable. I'm not saying you root for him, but you follow with interest and apprehension the developments of the story, which, indeed, he ends up manipulating and dominating completely, from the alliance with the treacherous sheriff to the fierce ostracism towards his colleagues, journalists from other newspapers, far more important than his, who rush to the scene but he got there much earlier…

The film runs fast for 111 minutes without slowdowns or flaws, which happens when the screenwriter, director, and producer is Billy Wilder, in the pantheon of filmmakers of all time, and to become a classic you have to have class…

Besides, shooting the film in the desert, setting up such a scene, and involving hundreds of extras can’t have been easy.

A cynical, ruthless film that makes no concessions. A classic in its own way, as powerful as it is evil. Is it just a film? Yes, of course, but consider that about thirty years later, a similar tragedy really happened in Italy, in Vermicino.