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Ace in the Hole

Durée
111 minCriterion presentation Sources des versions ↓

A disgraced reporter turns a man trapped in a cave into a prolonged national spectacle that may restore his career.

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Langue
English
BleakTense Idéal pour commencer · Facile à regarder

Édité par Monocurator

Original illustration: Giant black, red and ochre Ace in the Hole lettering with a mine lamp inside the O, above a newspaper and distant circus tent.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

Is Ace in the Hole based on a true story?

It draws on the 1925 Floyd Collins cave rescue, but Chuck Tatum and Leo Minosa belong to the film’s fictional story. Keep the historical incident and Wilder’s invented characters separate.

Floyd Collins The trapped man in 1925
A Kentucky cave explorer whose rescue drew national attention.
William Burke Miller The real reporter
The Louisville journalist who reached Collins, brought him food and spoke with him during the rescue.
Chuck Tatum and Leo Minosa The film’s characters
Kirk Douglas plays the ambitious reporter; Richard Benedict plays the trapped man whose predicament becomes his story.

Miller’s Collins reporting won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Reporting. The AFI Catalog records his practical help inside the cave. Tatum’s manipulation of the rescue should not be read as a biography of Miller.

What about the Kathy Fiscus rescue?

AFI records that contemporary reviews connected the film with the 1949 Fiscus case, but Wilder denied that connection in an interview. It is a reported comparison, rather than a second confirmed basis for his screenplay.

Film and character reference: Criterion’s Ace in the Hole entry.

À quoi s’attendre

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.

Comment aborder le film

The outcome matters less than the machinery gathering around the cave. Watch how language, barriers, tickets, and schedules convert rescue into a controlled event.

À savoir

Une brève note non exhaustive Includes entrapment, exploitation, corruption, alcohol, marital conflict, threatened violence, and death.
Momo's Note Peut contenir des révélations sur l’intrigue Qui est Momo ? → (S’ouvre en anglais)
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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

Momo thinking about this film

Générique et versions

Générique
Distribution
Kirk Douglas · Jan Sterling · Bob Arthur
Scénario
Billy Wilder · Lesser Samuels · Walter Newman
Production
Billy Wilder · Paramount Pictures Corp.
Photographie
Charles B. Lang Jr.

Carte des versions

Criterion presentation 111 min 111 minutes is attached only to the named Criterion presentation. No edition, cut, score, territory, frame rate, source element, or restoration detail is inferred. Source : The Criterion Collection — Ace in the Hole Référence pour la durée · Vérifié le 2026-08-20

Sources des données

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D’autres films de 1951 → (S’ouvre en anglais) D’autres films de Billy Wilder → (S’ouvre en anglais)
Pour aller plus loinThe Long Walk, The Running Man and Ace in the Hole → (S’ouvre en anglais) Journal

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