The Silver Screen Oasis

Would anyone like to comment on the great Billy Wilder noir. The recently released DVD is a great addition to my noir collection.

Is this a film noir? I always considered it a "social commentary" film, along the lines with A Face in the Crowd, Gentlemen's Agreement, or Sweet Smell of Success. Actually, all of these involve writers; so maybe it's the "Underwood Manual" genre? I don't recall the visual style of Ace in the Hole being particularly noir, but it's been awhile since I've seen it... whattya think?

Maybe it should be classified as a " Drama ", but a very cynical one.

The storyline was very ahead of its time. Today, it plays like a docudrama of the typical media circus.

But in its day and a more innocent time, it must have been very heady stuff for audiences to sit through.

Lzcutter wrote:The storyline was very ahead of its time. Today, it plays like a docudrama of the typical media circus.

But in its day and a more innocent time, it must have been very heady stuff for audiences to sit through.

Lynn,
I couldn't have said it better.

"Ace in the Hole" has never been one of my favorites. Granted, I saw it during a stressful time in my life, so I may have been hard to impress. Still, I thought the movie as a whole was too shrill and Kirk Douglas didn't convince me as the "hero." He seemed too sharp to have ended up in such a fix at the start of the movie, and he definitely seemed too tough and too smart to get killed like he did.

Maybe if Fred McMurray or Bill Holden had taken the part...

This film had another title, "The Big Carnival". It did very poorly at the box office and Wilder said it was because the viewing public had had enough of WW2 and couldn't bring themselves to accept the cynicism of the media. I have watched it twice and thought Douglas was very good in the lead role, as was the female lead. The rest of the film was rather forced and unreal; for example, all the people arriving with vans and carrying on as though on holidays. Today the internet might behave this way, but we wouldn't be physically aware of it. If Wilder had just focussed on the media, the newspaper industry and its ruthless minions the film would have worked. It had an important message to convey about the exploitation of people by the media and the prurience of a general public eager for salacious news.

One or two people here have questioned whether Ace in the Hole is a noir. This of course raises the ongoing conversation as to what, exactly, is "noir"? I don't want to get into it here, but I would certainly include Ace in the Hole in the classic Noir cannon. Noir does not always have to have the visual style associated with it ( shadows, rainy urban streets, chiaroscuro lighting, etc.) to be "noir". It also includes post-war alienation and cynicism, and central characters who have become hardened and isolated from feeling any connection with others. These elements certainly apply to Ace in the Hole in spades.
However, I did say I didn't want to get into such a discussion.
The other thing I wanted to say here was, I'm a huge fan of Jan Sterling, the actress who plays Lorraine, the hard-bitten wife of poor Leo. Sterling was in a number of noirs and other films of the 1950s, including one of my favourites, Mystery Street, and Humphrey Bogart's last film, The Harder They Fall.
She had a distinctive style, I always thought she really stood out in everything she was in. She's now almost forgotten, I wish she were better-known and appreciated today.

Great comments! Yes, I would agree that "Ace in the Hole" is a film noir, especially when you consider that "Leave Her to Heaven" was regarded as a colour noir, made at the end of WW2. "Ace" had a femme fatale and all those elements you mention of disconnection and alienation and its director had just come from "Double Indemnity", the ultimate noir, and was poised for another - "Sunset Boulevard". That genre seems to have evolved and now has a wider 'brand recognition' than in earlier times. All of it, suffice to say, emerged out of the gangster genre and the mean streets of the 1930s - urbanization and the rise of criminal cartels.

Welcome back MissW. We've missed you. So glad you're here