ExclusiveAce in the Hole: A Gripping Look at Media & Morality 🎥📰

The sun is shining to welcome the day. Hi-ho, come to the fair. The scoop of a lifetime amid all the fray. Hi-ho, come to the fair. All the rides and attractions are fine as can be. And who wouldn't come for a good tragedy? So it's come then, ladies and men, to the fair in the bright of the morning. So deck yourselves out in your finest array with a hi-ho. Come to the fair. For Leo the bandleader plays a new song. Hi-ho, come to the fair. The drill goes on beating, this couldn't be wrong. Hi-ho, come to the fair. There'll be nothing to give you a moment of pause. Remember, it's all in the name of a cause. So it's come then, ladies and men, to the fair in the bright of the morning. So come join the throne, there'll be plenty of fun. And it's hi-ho, come to the fair. What are you doing, Rebecca? Oh, just reading the latest Broadway news. Anything interesting? Yes, right now everyone's talking about the Broadway revival of Floyd Collins. Floyd Collins? What's that? It's this musical based on the real-life story of this cave explorer, Floyd Collins, who was trapped and eventually died in a cave in Kentucky in 1925. It's a musical about a man stuck in a cave? Yes, it was a flop when it was first produced off-Broadway in 1996. I see why. But it has gained quite a following since then, and a lot of people think the soundtrack is really good. But how can you take such a horrific tragedy and make it into a source of entertainment? That's just it. Sometimes the most unlikely source material can be your ace in the hole. I'm Tiffany Brannan. I'm Rebecca Brannan. Welcome to Real Thoughts on Cinema. The story of Floyd Collins has come back into the public consciousness this year, not only because this is the 100th anniversary of the tragedy, but because the musical about it has finally made it to Broadway. Several reviews that have recently come out of the musical refer to the fact that there also was a classic film based on the same material, Ace in the Hole. That's right. We had stumbled across this movie just a week before, interestingly, but not through doing research on the musical, even though I was very interested in it. Right, I was just looking up all the movies that Billy Wilder made, and I happened upon that, and I thought, how interesting, because I was very surprised I'd never heard of this film. Exactly. It follows this reporter, Chuck Tatum, who's come from the big city, and he's been fired from pretty much every big newspaper in America, so he ends up on this little New Mexico paper, and for a year, he's just waiting for something to happen that's interesting to his big city newspaper senses. And when he's going out to cover a rattlesnake hunt, he happens across the story of the century. A man is trapped in a cave, out in sort of the open area between Albuquerque and the next large town, and he is inspired by the real-life tragedy of Floyd Collins to turn this into another media circus. This 1951 film was released by Paramount Pictures. It was not only directed by Billy Wilder, but also produced by him. He also co-wrote the story with two other men. It stars Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling. This film is very unusual in the genre of films based on true accounts, that it acknowledges the story on which it was most heavily based as a separate event, which would be the tragedy of Floyd Collins. I know this was based on that, and even though it was set in the time when it was made, in the early 50s, I assumed they would just draw inspiration from that and not address it. And it was kind of startling to me when he mentioned the name Floyd Collins quite prominently. They talked about it quite a bit. Especially with kind of the perception of that being a modern phenomenon with this musical. It was weird to hear the name mentioned in a classic film, even though I know it happened in the 20s. So it was acknowledging that it was inspired by that, and as a matter of fact, that was one of the main points of the plot. That he took that as an example of how to turn a tragedy into a big news story. One of these reviews that we read of the musical that mentioned this movie, highlighted the fact that the reason the movie is perhaps more successful than the musical, was that the musical just focuses on Floyd Collins, the man trapped in a cave. But the movie is about the reporter who makes it, the media circus. Exactly. The creative team on the musical Floyd Collins talk a lot about how they really wanted to bring across this message of how it's so sad that we, as a society and as a culture, capitalize on tragedy. But the movie makes that point even stronger by, instead of it just being, oh, shame on society for doing this, that one person sets out to do this. So it's highlighting more how... And then other people get involved in wanting to profit off it. But the people come to just the looky-loos like, no, it's not really the right thing to do, but, you know, they're just kind of group mentality. But that this one person would actually basically sacrifice this man's life just to get ahead. Yes. I think it really becomes more of a moral tale because of that. And in addition to the Floyd Collins story, one thing that made this story more relevant at the time it was made, was that there was another cave incident that actually took place in New Mexico in 1949. With a, tragically, a toddler, a small child was trapped in a cave and she ended up dying much sooner because they couldn't get her out in time. But I think that's why this is set in New Mexico as opposed to in Kentucky. Right. So this is sort of like that. This is the second incident this century that has been this large of a media sensation involving a cave. It's really interesting to see how this is a Billy Wilder film, because this was his first film not made with producer Charles Brackett, who was his co-writer and his producer for most of his films up to this point. They'd had some disagreements during their last film, Sunset Boulevard, so they parted ways. So now Billy Wilder was on his own producing, although he did have some other writers helping him. But because Sunset Boulevard had been such a huge hit, the studio just let him do whatever he wanted. They gave him carte blanche and it didn't go as well this time. So this film was not successful, right, on its original release, from a monetary standpoint? That's right. It was not financially successful. And some people say that even the average audience member didn't like it that much because it was a little on the grim side. Right. Did it get any critical acclaim? It was critically acclaimed by many people and it was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards. So often the critics like it and people don't. So that's why it lost a lot of money and they spent a lot of money making it too. You can see the grandeur of it. I was blown away by it. But then later it has become very acclaimed and many people think it's one of his best movies now. He himself, even though he acknowledged that it damaged his career at the time, said that it was one of his best movies. And Kirk Douglas, yes, it was one of his favorite of his own films too. I think it's really interesting to see this, especially if you've seen some of Billy Wilder's later work, and maybe you haven't seen as much of his early work, you will be shocked by this one. This is Billy Wilder because in the later 50s, going into the 60s, he's made really goofy comedies. Yeah. And sometimes kind of raunchy. Right. But this is so serious and intense, more like Sunset Boulevard, his previous film. But I would say even grittier than that. In some ways more like The Lost Weekend. Right. And you can see sort of a trend in this, if you really study Billy Wilder's work, of the type of story that he had. Comparing it to Sunset Boulevard, he once again has this sort of cynical writer. And I think being a cynical writer himself, maybe he was projecting himself into that. And Lost Weekend, he's a cynical alcoholic writer in that too. So that's definitely his touch. And also just, even if they're not writers, he really tends to have a leading man who really isn't very likable. He's kind of morally nebulous, if not kind of evil. And you really don't sympathize with him. You think, okay, he's going to make you more sympathetic, but not really. Same thing with Stalag 17. Yes, another film. That's kind of an unlike. A lot of people didn't want to play that role because it was kind of unlikable. But I think this one, Chuck Tatum, takes the cake. Yeah. He has a bit of an attack of conscience in the last quarter of the film. But I wouldn't say he really has a transformation. He never really admits what he did was wrong or repents. He just starts to realize the true consequences of his actions. Yes. Not to spoil it too much, but very early on in the tragedy, this engineer tells him, oh, we can shore up the walls of the cave and get him out in 14 hours. And he, in cahoots with the sheriff, is like, oh, no. Let's get this giant drill and drill down to him from the top of the mountain, which will take six or seven days. Floyd Collins lasted 18 days. It'll be fine. But when it becomes apparent that this man is very quickly failing, he contracts pneumonia, he suddenly realizes this is going to actually turn into Floyd Collins. This man is going to die. And at that point, you wonder what is motivating him when he suddenly is saying to the contractor, forget the drill, shore up those walls, and get him out. The sheriff is like, why are you doing that? If we get there and he's dead, you know, we tried. Nobody except the contractor knows that there was any other way to get him out. And he actually says, if we do that, we'll be admitting that we could have done that before, and everyone will be asking questions that we'll have a hard time answering. So then you wonder. There are two things that could be motivating him. It could be what he says. This is a human interest story, and it's no good as a human interest if the human dies. Right. You've got to give people a payoff. Or could it be that suddenly he realizes that he's about to kill this man, and he actually does care? Maybe a little of both. We don't really know. To go back to Billy Wilder and this film and how dark and controversial it was, I think Billy Wilder gets a lot of credit as one of the people who destroyed the motion picture production code. Yes. It's kind of one of his greatest claims to fame. With movies like Some Like It Hot from 1959, The Apartment, 1960, and then a little later, Irma LaDeuce and Kiss Me Stupid in the 60s. According to them, they were released without seals of approval from the production code administration, or they were banned by the Legion of Decency. There were lots of different stories. But basically, he made these movies. People liked them. That was the end of the code. And the code is often called the Hays Code, was this set of guidelines about what could and couldn't be in movies. And it was very influential in Hollywood starting in 1934 because of Joseph Breen's leadership at the production code administration. And if you just look at the dates and see the code was in place from 1934 to 1968, you could think, oh, what Billy Wilder and a few other directors did in the late 50s and early 60s really did some damage. Right. But as this film shows, it's not the people who are kind of doing the wrong thing do it. There's got to be this one person on the inside who's sort of running things, who makes it go downhill. And in that case, it was Joseph Breen's right-hand man, Geoffrey Sherlock. When he took over in 1954, or really, 1955. Because Joseph Breen retired in 1954. You immediately see the change. I mean, it's crazy how immediately you see the change. Some movies from 1955, it's like. And if you see the correspondence between the PCA and Billy Wilder, Geoffrey Sherlock was always palling around with Billy Wilder. And not that Joseph Breen wasn't friendly with him. He was friendly with all the filmmakers. But he knew that he could be up to no good. Right. So to contrast the films that he made, think about, okay, part of his career, he made crazy comedies. And part, he made these really controversial dark films. Surely he must have made the dark ones after the code stopped restricting him. No, he made the dark controversial ones during the height of this restriction. Billy Wilder is not the only example of this. There are many directors and just many films that I think really highlight how the code helped the industry so much. People like Billy Wilder. He is, or was, such a brilliant man. Brilliant writer, brilliant director. And his code films show such subtlety and power. And there's none of that in his later films. Yeah, he ended up just being a goofball, really. Yes, he just seems like he wasn't trying. He was just making this kind of suggestive fluff. And the code challenged him to be better. And so he had to really show his brilliance. He had to challenge himself and find subtleties. Although, what's interesting about Billy Wilder is I wouldn't really describe him as a subtle director. He's actually quite obvious, but he knows how to get away with it. His symbolism is very apparent. He really wants you to understand the clever little things that he's put in there. This film is kind of notable for that they say the title in a really prominent moment. What'd you have? A pair of deuces. This is better. Here we've got an ace in the hole. That's your ace in the hole to the sheriff. And the multilayered meaning of that title is quite brilliant. When you first told me, oh, there's a movie that was based on Floyd Collins, it's called Ace in the Hole, I just went, that's brilliant. That's such a deeply layered title. Because he's in a hole because he's stuck in the cave. He's an ace reporter. And also, that's his ace in the hole. That's that lucky thing that Chuck has been waiting to find for a year. Exactly. And the character of that man who's stuck in the cave is an interesting fellow. He's of, you know, Mexican, Spanish descent. And he's a simple man, just a really simple, kind person who has been exploring in these caves for Indian relics. That was his reason for going in there. But he went a little too deep. And there's a bit of superstition, you see, because he's saying, this was a burial ground, and so the spirits of these Indians don't want me to get out. There are some Indians there when Kirk Douglas first comes, when Chuck first comes, and he says, well, couldn't some of these Indians go in there? And they say, they won't go in, they're bad spirits. Yes. So, yes, he says a couple of times, like, they won't let me out. Again, they won't let me go because they didn't want me in their burial ground. And that superstition is what Chuck uses as the basis of his whole story that starts the media circus. Like, the haunted mountain chief, Indian chief. So that's the drama of it. And he gets the sheriff on his side. Because he knows that sheriff is sort of not a good sheriff. He could be corrupt. And he plays on that. Because he's coming up for election. He says, I will get you reelected. I will paint you as the hero in my paper if you promise you won't let any other reporter get the story. So then it's all his. He's got the scoop. And all the other reporters come, and they're just getting, like, right on the surface, just basically what they observe. Okay, there are a bunch of people here. It's turned into a carnival. But he's actually going down there and seeing the man. And then they ask the sheriff, why couldn't Tatum go down? And he just says, it's off limits. He won't give them an answer. So he's got the story all to himself. And as a result, like, every big paper wants to buy the stories. And then he gets his job back in New York. Which was what he wanted. He orchestrates it perfectly. And it's really sad. There's a young man from the paper in which he was working. And he brings along with him, very young and fresh-faced and kind of innocent, he went to journalism school instead of going to the school of hard knocks. And the way that he's, like, dragging this young man sort of down with him is quite unsettling. Yeah, because the boy starts to really admire him. But it's really good to see how at the end he sees what was wrong. Chuck sort of becomes a moral example for him by showing him the wrong way to live, the wrong thing to do. And I think that young man's turning back to the light is really the only redemptive quality of the whole film. Because most of the characters don't end well. Or they don't necessarily have a huge redemption. He realizes he's wrong. But to see that this young man could have become the same kind of person. And he doesn't. Right. He's going to stay on the right side. And one character I like a lot is the publisher of the Albuquerque Sun. Yes. He's a great character. He has on his wall this tell-the-truth, this embroidered sign. And it seems a little simplistic. And Tatum is making fun of it. But ultimately he realizes this was the good paper. This was the place that they cared about the truth. And that journalism can be used for good or for evil. He was using it for evil. But hopefully this young man can maybe even write an expose about what happened and bring the light to the truth. Yes. That really is a good, strong moral character to have in there as sort of the counterpoint. And in his first meeting with Chuck, Chuck makes note of that he's wearing a belt and suspenders. He says, you're a very cautious man. So then in a later scene when he comes and kind of confronts him about this carnival he's created, he comments on them again. He says, those suspenders are out of style. And then a little later in the scene he had also started wearing suspenders and he takes the suspenders off. Very symbolic. Heavy-handed symbolism. Somewhat heavy-handed symbolism. Another bit of heavy-handed symbolism is showing that the sheriff is generally a pretty amiable fellow, but you know that he's very evil. He's not as hard or as tough as Chuck because he's not from the big city. Probably the thing that shows just how evil he is, he has a pet rattlesnake that he got from the hunt. He's talking about it like it's a little puppy or something. He's feeding it and playing with it. And he likes it. Everyone else is trying to kill rattlesnakes, but it's his pet. Yes. I didn't really think of that. You're right. That's definitely strong symbolism. It's showing how he's that corrupt character. And even when Chuck starts to be horrified, he's like, nobody will know. So he's even more callous than Chuck. It's amazing to see when you see someone being more callous than Chuck. It's true. And he's like, so if we get there and it's too late, oh well, we tried. Another character who is perhaps just as callous, if not more so, is the man stuck in the cave's name is Leo Minosa. Right. So his wife. Played by Jan Sterling. She is terrible. Oh, there is a hard woman. Maybe one of the hardest female characters I've seen in a classic film. She is a real bad girl. She just is almost, it's like you wonder if she's human. She's so lacking in any kind of emotion other than greed and selfishness. Greed and selfishness and just sort of, she's passion. She's obviously very attracted to Chuck. But even that, you see, she thinks maybe he can take her away from this place. You're right. It's not really anything personal. She doesn't have personal feelings for anyone. It's lust, but it's motivated just by ambition and desire. Her only motivation is just greed and selfishness. She's like this coarse girl and she fell for Leo when he was in a uniform because he told her that he had a lot of land. And she thought they would have a good life. But then it turns out it's a bunch of acres of nothing. And this little diner where they sell eight hamburgers a week. Right. And she's ready to leave as soon as he's in that cave. She has her bag packed and she's out the door. But Chuck talks her into staying because he says, people are going to come and you're going to be doing so much business. You need to stay here to be the dutiful wife. And pretty soon she realizes he's right. And he paints her as this grieved wife. But she's not very helpful to him because she won't play along with the act. She never makes any attempt at seeming like she's grieving. And she just so obviously couldn't care less. One interesting thing that, again talking about symbolism, is she has really, really blonde hair. Now, Dan Sterling always had blonde hair. But it doesn't even look good. And her hair just looks like it's been so bleached it might even be a wig. Yes. So it's very fake looking. The other movie in which he had a leading lady with fake looking blonde hair was Double Indemnity from 1944. People joke about how fake Barbara Stanwyck's blonde wig looks in that. But they're the same type of character. A woman who doesn't like her husband, is faithless to her husband, and is interested in another man. So I think he used the symbolism of that obnoxious platinum blonde hair, which looks white in black and white, as showing how shallow she is. It's Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity because years earlier, before the code, in the pre-code days, she played Babyface, a character whose hair gradually starts to look more like plastic and lacquered throughout the course of the film. And again, it's very white blonde. Very white blonde, yes. So I think you're absolutely right. That's a very good comparison that that is another use of symbolism. My costume is based on one of the outfits which Jan Sterling wears. This is actually the outfit she wears when she's trying to leave the first time. It's a suit with a pencil skirt and a little coat and a striped blouse, but she doesn't wear the coat very long. For most of the scene, she takes that off, and then we see her working around the diner, and she's wearing short sleeves, striped blouse, and the slim skirt, and she wears ankle strap shoes. And as she's getting ready to leave in one scene, she's wearing a black hat. My outfit is inspired by her final costume, which is actually more of a robe or a house dress, which she's wearing in the scene in her room when she's restyling her hair, and she's going to dye it back to its original color of light brown. So she has it up in sort of a messy high bun, and Chuck gives her a fur piece, which her husband had bought for her, which she refuses to wear. There's so much to say about this film, of course. You really have to experience it for yourself, but the way that it created this carnival atmosphere, that when the film was originally not being very successful, they decided to re-release it with a different name, The Big Carnival. That must have made Billy Wilder so angry, because he had this brilliant symbolic title. It didn't help anyway. But in creating that, they did do a lot of location footage in New Mexico with these real caves, and then they built some replicas of the interior shots of the cave for the interior footage. As more and more people come, there's so many cars and extras. They actually hired locals, and they paid them 75 cents an hour to come, and they paid them more if they brought cars to mill around and pretend like they were there. But I think that instead of just saying, oh, these people are so callous, he shows that in a way, they think they're helping, because there are big signs saying, all proceeds go to the Save Leo Fund. So they think they're actually supporting him. Right, and you see a lot of them being very grieved when, spoiler alert, but when he dies. Yeah, and it really focused, you don't meet any of these characters except this one family, the first ones who come. And we see them throughout several times as they're just stopping by on their way, but they end up staying there. They're pitching their tent. Speaking of double indemnity, this fellow says he works for an insurance company, which was a fictional insurance company that Billy Wilder made up in double indemnity. Yes. He's staying on brand. And you see that they're curious, they're enjoying the carnival, they're having fun for the kids. But then, afterwards, as the carnival's over and everyone's packing up, the wife starts crying. So you see, these people weren't just wanting to see something horrible happen, they wanted to see this man get out. Yeah, they wanted to be there to cheer when he emerged from the cave. There's even a theme song that a cowboy band is singing one time, like, don't give up, Leo! So you really see, these people aren't horrible. Maybe they're a little morbidly curious, but they care about another human being. And for the first couple of days, it's really just people all coming in. They want to help, or they want to see him come out safe and sound. But then, when things really take a shift towards sort of the macabre, is when Mrs. Minoza lets a literal carnival come in. They've got the Ferris wheel, hot dogs, poker, and the whole deal, and Leo's father's like, you're letting the carnival come in here just because they're paying for it? And it's really just, it's kind of overwhelming to see. And the way it's filmed, the cinematography is so good. It's shot from up at the top of the mountain that he's under. Seeing this mass of humanity, all these cars and the Ferris wheel, it is a media circus. That's what it is. It's become like the county fair. It's just wild how just this one man starting off this media frenzy creates this. And I think the reason why it's more powerful, to me at least, than Floyd Collins is because it is about this orchestrated drama and it has the scope and the back and forth. It doesn't get stuck. We see who the man in the cave is, but we also see who the man behind the story is. And it's really a powerful story. And I highly recommend it to all your people out there who don't think the classic films are intense or dramatic or mature, because this movie is very edgy, dark, controversial. It has all those things, yet the whole family can watch it. If you're disturbed by the idea of a man dying in a cave, yeah, it's disturbing, but it's not gory, and it deals with some complex, complicated issues in a really subtle, mature, but intelligent way. And if you think about it, the rating system would probably rate this at least PG, because it's mature topics. But there's no profanity, there's no nudity, there's no violence. What is it that makes it anything other than acceptable for general audiences? Like I said, it's controversial, it's kind of dark, but it is within the guidelines of the code, and if you enjoy a dramatic, challenging entertainment experience, you'll really like this movie. Or if you like Floyd Collins, I think you'd be fascinated to see another, telling a story, or if you don't really like Floyd Collins, and you think they missed it by a mile, well maybe this film will do it for you a little more. I think this is a great example, especially in comparing it with the very minimalist style of the current musical, that in old Hollywood, they really were concerned about, I knew how to do this right, to really make it look like something, to make things look good. Their actors, or the scenery, whatever it is, they always really were focused on it looking good and really looking impressive, and the spectacle presented in this film is amazing, as well as the intimate, really intense, kind of claustrophobic scenes in the cave. This movie is readily available. You can rent or buy it on Amazon Prime Video and other streaming services. It's available on DVD. When we purchased it on Amazon Prime Video, it was greatly reduced. It was around $4. Now that may be because that was right after the musical opened on Broadway, so maybe they thought everybody would want to watch it. But either way, it's never going to be more than around $10 to purchase, and then you can watch it in a beautiful, clear copy, and I think you'll find it very entertaining. Ace in the Hole is all about grit and realism and the drama of real people in everyday life, but not all classic films were that intense or that based in reality. Join us next time as we talk about one of the greatest fantasy films from the classic era. Thank you for watching! Goodbye!