What a good movie. It's hard to believe that the audience was considered so sensitive in 1947 that the original title, "Ace in the Hole," had to be dropped and replaced with this less ironic one. Viewers were thought unprepared for a film in which a reporter misbehaved, with lethal results.
"The Big Carnival" is one of the reasons the director, Billy Wilder, earned a reputation as a cynic. It was probably deserved. He had a keen sense of humor as well (Wilder: "I laugh at everything. I laugh at Hamlet.") but it's not much on display here. Instead we have a naive veteran pinned underground and an ambitious reporter (Kirk Douglas) who deliberately delays the rescue in order to squeeze the most out of the story. Instead of extracting the victim from the heart of the mountain the quick and easy way, Douglas talks the corrupt sheriff and engineer into doing it the long, slow, and ultimately lethal way. The tubby engineer caught in the middle is the unhappy Frank Jaquet. He mops his brow and imitates digging with none of the icononoclastic pizazz of William "Strata" Smith. Just a schlubb. Except for the victim, I felt sorrier for the engineer Smollett than for anyone else. Poor Louie Minosa. He catches pneumonia and dies after being given extreme unction. Douglas dies too, as the code of the time required.
Wilder's direction is fine. Douglas acquires a young acolyte and when they last speak together, the light is behind Douglas so that Douglas's sharp shadow blacks out almost all of the kid's face. In the last shot, from floor level, Douglas collapses and his dead face flops almost into the camera lens although the face is too dark to make out, his features, like his soul, in deep shadow. In another scene, Douglas is busily reading his mail and concocting additional material for the Big Story. Douglas again is in deep shadow. Beside him is the bright figure of Louie Minosa's wife, the trashy, blond Jan Sterling. She's a tough and narcissistic cookie out of Baltimore and, impressed by Douglas's power and his ability to bring in the bucks, she comes on to him with a wide and seductive smile. Douglas looks at her over his shoulder and says, "You're the grief-stricken wife, so stop smiling." "Make me," she replies, and he slaps her twice, hard, across the face.
It's a shocking moment and, despite Douglas's earlier casual chatter about his ambitions, the viewer suddenly realizes that this guy will stop at nothing. That is, he not only claims to be ruthless, he really MEANS it. "That's the expression I want to see," Douglas tells her smoothly. "Don't wipe those tears away." Everyone gives performances that are at least decent. Porter Hall, whom you will recognize, does a comic/dramatic turn as the stuffy and conservative editor of an Albuquerque newspaper. One of the few chuckles the viewer is allowed is when Douglas first asks Porter for a job and analyzes Porter as a small-time fellow because he wears both belt AND suspenders, compared to Douglas's flashy suit. A year goes by and we see Douglas too wearing both belt and suspenders. (He shucks the suspenders when he gets a job offer from New York.)
This is a finely made movie about two parallel scoops: an attempt to dig Louie Minosa out of his underground prison and Douglas's attempt to turn the story into a heady drama.
"The Big Carnival" is one of the reasons the director, Billy Wilder, earned a reputation as a cynic. It was probably deserved. He had a keen sense of humor as well (Wilder: "I laugh at everything. I laugh at Hamlet.") but it's not much on display here. Instead we have a naive veteran pinned underground and an ambitious reporter (Kirk Douglas) who deliberately delays the rescue in order to squeeze the most out of the story. Instead of extracting the victim from the heart of the mountain the quick and easy way, Douglas talks the corrupt sheriff and engineer into doing it the long, slow, and ultimately lethal way. The tubby engineer caught in the middle is the unhappy Frank Jaquet. He mops his brow and imitates digging with none of the icononoclastic pizazz of William "Strata" Smith. Just a schlubb. Except for the victim, I felt sorrier for the engineer Smollett than for anyone else. Poor Louie Minosa. He catches pneumonia and dies after being given extreme unction. Douglas dies too, as the code of the time required.
Wilder's direction is fine. Douglas acquires a young acolyte and when they last speak together, the light is behind Douglas so that Douglas's sharp shadow blacks out almost all of the kid's face. In the last shot, from floor level, Douglas collapses and his dead face flops almost into the camera lens although the face is too dark to make out, his features, like his soul, in deep shadow. In another scene, Douglas is busily reading his mail and concocting additional material for the Big Story. Douglas again is in deep shadow. Beside him is the bright figure of Louie Minosa's wife, the trashy, blond Jan Sterling. She's a tough and narcissistic cookie out of Baltimore and, impressed by Douglas's power and his ability to bring in the bucks, she comes on to him with a wide and seductive smile. Douglas looks at her over his shoulder and says, "You're the grief-stricken wife, so stop smiling." "Make me," she replies, and he slaps her twice, hard, across the face.
It's a shocking moment and, despite Douglas's earlier casual chatter about his ambitions, the viewer suddenly realizes that this guy will stop at nothing. That is, he not only claims to be ruthless, he really MEANS it. "That's the expression I want to see," Douglas tells her smoothly. "Don't wipe those tears away." Everyone gives performances that are at least decent. Porter Hall, whom you will recognize, does a comic/dramatic turn as the stuffy and conservative editor of an Albuquerque newspaper. One of the few chuckles the viewer is allowed is when Douglas first asks Porter for a job and analyzes Porter as a small-time fellow because he wears both belt AND suspenders, compared to Douglas's flashy suit. A year goes by and we see Douglas too wearing both belt and suspenders. (He shucks the suspenders when he gets a job offer from New York.)
This is a finely made movie about two parallel scoops: an attempt to dig Louie Minosa out of his underground prison and Douglas's attempt to turn the story into a heady drama.