DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Billy Wilder
PRODUCTION CO: Paramount
SCREENPLAY: Walter Newman, Lesser Samuels, Billy Wilder
PHOTOGRAPHY: Charles Lang
EDITOR: Arthur P Schmidt
MUSIC: Hugo Friedhofer
WITH: Kirk Douglas (Chuck Tatum), Jan Sterling (Lorraine Minosa), Robert Arthur (Herbie Cook), Porter Hall (Jacob Q Boot), Frank Cady (Mr Federber), Richard Benedict (Leo Minosa), Ray Teal (Sheriff Kretzer), Lewis Martin (McCardle)

FESTIVALS: Venice 

REVIEW

“Since re-emerging in the 2000s, Billy Wilder’s superb Ace in the Hole, so ahead of its time in the 1950s with its acidic and unflinching examination of journalistic ethics and human morality, has taken its place alongside Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, and The Apartment as among the director’s greatest works.

In one of the most powerhouse performances in American screen-acting, the great Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a potentially career-making story in Albuquerque, New Mexico (nearly sixty years later, the setting for Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad). When Tatum begins to influence the story’s outcome, a descent begins that finds more than one man caught between a rock and a hard place.

An electric narrative that stands as one of Wilder’s tautest and most (melo)dramatic plots (penned with Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman), Ace in the Hole plays today as both a prescient examination of the modern media landscape, and the public appetite for the disastrous news-story that leads to toxic wish-fulfillment.”

​— Masters of Cinema

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Wellington
Monday, 03 April, 6.15pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 02 May, 8.15pm

Canterbury
Monday, 29 May, 7.00pm

Nelson
Tuesday, 27 June, 6.00pm

Hamilton  
Monday, 03 July, 6.30pm

​Whanganui  
Monday, 24 July, 7.00pm

Auckland
Tuesday, 24 October, 6.15pm 

Palmerston North
Wednesday, 15 November, 6.00pm

​Dunedin
Wednesday, 29 November, 7.30pm

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