What to expect
Billy Wilder builds a savage account of news as an industry of access, delay, and audience appetite. The film remains sharp because responsibility spreads outward from one reporter to editors, officials, businesses, and crowds.
How to ease in
The outcome matters less than the machinery gathering around the cave. Watch how language, barriers, tickets, and schedules convert rescue into a controlled event.
Heads-up
A disgraced reporter turns a man trapped in a cave into a prolonged national spectacle that may restore his career.
The crowd grows so quickly that the trapped man almost disappears beneath the story about him. I keep hearing the machinery outside and wondering how rescue became the quietest activity on the site.
Open the note ↓
The crowd grows so quickly that the trapped man almost disappears beneath the story about him. I keep hearing the machinery outside and wondering how rescue became the quietest activity on the site.
— Momo
Credits & versions
- Cast
- Kirk Douglas · Jan Sterling · Bob Arthur
- Screenplay
- Billy Wilder · Lesser Samuels · Walter Newman
- Production
- Billy Wilder · Paramount Pictures Corp.
- Cinematography
- Charles B. Lang Jr.
Version map
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