Ace in the Hole (1951)

Essential Viewing

USA

Feature Film

Director: Billy Wilder

Writers: Walter Newman, Lesser Samuels, Billy Wilder

Cinematographer: Charles B. Lang Jr.

Composer: Hugo Friedhofer

Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Bob Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady, Richard Benedict, Ray Teal, Lewis Martin, John Berkes

Douglas’s down-on-his-luck, slumming, formerly renowned journalist stumbles upon a potential big story when a small town man becomes trapped by a cave-in, which the unscrupulous scribbler then strives to drag out for as long as possible, in Wilder’s cynical portrait of cynicism, which brilliantly presents an unrelentingly bleak account of mankind. Iain.Stott