Media Alert
Tomorrow, Saturday, August 30, Turner Classic Movies is showing a tremendous movie directed, produced and co-written by Billy Wilder, "Ace in the Hole." It's not one of his best-known films and doesn't get shown a lot, so it's worth sending a notice about.
The movie stars Kirk Douglas and is most-definitely not a comedy. It's one of his darker films, more in the vein of "Double Indemnity" than "The Apartment" or "Sabrina.
When a man is trapped in a cave-in, a media circus is intentionally created to cash in on public interest and extend the rescue efforts in order to help lengthen national attention, as hucksters and other self-interests gather at the site. It's a scathing film about human nature and media manipulation, and one of the most remarkable things about the movie is that it was made in 1951, when people got their news from newspapers and radio, long before the importance of TV news took a hold, and many decades before 24-hour news channels and their "Breaking News!" endless coverage was even imagined, almost a half-century far ahead of its time.
TCM's airing starts at 10 PM Eastern time, 7 PM on the West Coast.
Here's the trailer. It gives a very good sense of the tone of the film, but needs to hide a lot of the twists and turns, so it really doesn't do the movie full justice. The trailer is good -- the movie is riveting, thoughtful and timely, though made almost 75 years ago. Perhaps more timely today than then.
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