My favorite line in a movie we finished watching last night — "Ace in the Hole."
ADDED: I'd started watching that movie a while back and forced myself to finish it yesterday after my son John — who ranked it as the best movie of 1951 — reminded me it was about to end its run on the Criterion Channel. It's a rather strange movie about a ruthless, ambitious journalist. It's got the most absurd scene involving a fur garment. I don't want to spoil it, so that's all I'll say.
AND: There are a lot of movies about journalism — usually presenting the journalist as a hero. For example here's a ranking, with "Ace in the Hole" at #46, but if you limit that to movies where the journalist is an awful person — which I'm not equipped to do — I'm guessing it would make the top 10.
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Watched "Out of the Past" with Douglas recently. Lots of snappy dialogue (and Mitchum chain smoking).
The blond (Jan Sterling) is the frustrated wife of the owner of a seedy desert gas station cum diner cum curio shop who likes to explore caves in search of Paleoindian artifacts to sell in his business. Kirk Douglas is a frustrated newspaperman in search of THE STORY that will make him rich. Then Fate plays an ace...
A noir of a different color. See it.
Kirk was born in my husband's hometown of Amsterdam New York. He was not well liked there.
Out of the Past is the very best of the noirs, with Double Indemnity placing by a nose and The Big Sleep a respectable show.
AKA "The Big Carnival". It reinforced a cynical view of the media that the younger me was developing.
I saw this movie years ago on the late show.
My recollection is that it was a pretty good illustration of how newspapers and reporters have always been pretty shitty.
Starting about 400 years ago.
I don't remember the egg line but I do love it. It put a smile on my face
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Kirk Douglas is great in this movie! The ultimate heel. Too bad he's a broken egg at the end, with his yolk all gooey and soft.
Ace in Hole has a lot of great one-liners, unfortunately its rather silly. Set in New Mexico, everyone is either a coward or rotten to the core, and visting New Yorker Douglas is allowed to snark and insult the locals without any pushback. Douglas' seeing the light at the end was a cop out.
Favorite Lines:
-Do you drink a lot?
-Not a lot - just frequently.
-We're all in the same boat.
-I'm in the boat. You're in the water. Now let's see how you can swim.
"We're coming, Leo"
All of my hard-boiled eggs are 20 minutes.
Cover them with water in a pot.
Put on the stove with medium/high heat.
Set timer for 20 minutes.
At about 10 minutes the water will start to boil and eggs will bounce around.
Turn down to high simmer and take off the stove at 20 minutes.
Run under cold water.
Eat.
When talking about Out of the Past people tend to discuss Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, however, the real star was Jane Greer. Without her in the femme fatale role, the film would have been just another postwar potboiler. Geer's Katie Moffat displays ten thousand shades of emotion just through her face -- from a winsome pout like a little girl mooning over a stray puppy to a silent promise of sexual bliss. But it's all a sham. Katie Moffat has only one genuine emotion. The look on Jane Geer's face when her character guns down Jeff's erstwhile partner is worth the price of admission all by itself.
"I met a lotta hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you? You’re 20 minutes."
The advantages of thinking about baseball.
His Girl Friday (or the Front Page) is pretty cynical about reporters. The heroism trope is a joke.
Still, it made me want to be one so...I interned at the local paper one summer and it wasn't near so much fun.
That's a dark movie. Not Wilder's best but an interesting and provocative effort.
The movie got panned by the critics in 1951. Wilder thought it was the journalists taking revenge.
SPOILER
The ending is quite ridiculous. Tatum the Kirk douglas character, is completely amoral and egotistical. He cares about only one thing: Himself. The idea that after being stabbed he would do anything except drive to the nearest Hospital was absurd. And the idea that he would suddenly change to caring about Leo was even more unbelievable.
And then we have the Jan Sterling character. Of course, evil women are a Film Noir trope. But even she is absurdly pyschopathic. what she doesn't have once ounce of sympathy for her husband? Really?
You tell your son John that the best movie of 1951 was...
An American in Paris
Or maybe Early Summer
Possibly My Favorite Spy
And it might be His Kind of Woman
Or maybe it's Strangers on a Train
Another possibility is The African Queen
Or even The Thing From Another World
And don't forget the powerful The Browning Version.
I do have Ace in the Hole in my top 10 for the year. I'd call it a flawed masterpiece, maybe. Some really interesting stuff in Wilder's film. (I would not put it in the top 10 of Wilder's output, by the way).
Another brilliant film from Billy Wilder, who kept a photo of his mentor in his office with the line: "What would Lubitsch do?"
There are a lot of movies about journalism — usually presenting the journalist as a hero.
Perhaps that's because so many journalists write screenplays, or try to.
Quaestor said...
...The Big Sleep a respectable show.
Murder My Sweet, which is an adaptation of Farewell My Lovely, is a far better Phillip Marlowe film.
Best of 1951 --
On Dangerous Ground
runner-up: Strangers on a Train
My favorite bad journalist movie is Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
"Is that a boost or knock, because I haven't time to figure it out."
My question as well.
The funniest line in ACE IN THE HOLE is Lorraine's comment to Tatum.
"I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons."
That's WILDER.
Another great line from ACE IN A HOLE is Tatum to the editor of the paper he's signing on with. Veracity is the subject concerning Tatum and facts.
TATUM: "I’ve done a lot of lying in my time. I’ve lied to men who wear belts. I’ve lied to men who wear suspenders. But I’d never be so stupid as to lie to a man who wears both belt and suspenders. You strike me as a conscientious man, a man who checks and double-checks."
This picture is so good.
Among Wilder's BEST.
Kirk was never better. He came close in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.
The novel it's based on "The Cave" by Robert Penn Warren is well worth reading though not up to the standard of "All the King's Men" which is also about morally challenged reporters in it's way.
"When talking about Out of the Past people tend to discuss Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, however, the real star was Jane Greer. Without her in the femme fatale role, the film would have been just another postwar potboiler. Geer's Katie Moffat displays ten thousand shades of emotion just through her face -- from a winsome pout like a little girl mooning over a stray puppy to a silent promise of sexual bliss. But it's all a sham. Katie Moffat has only one genuine emotion. The look on Jane Geer's face when her character guns down Jeff's erstwhile partner is worth the price of admission all by itself."
I agree with you that Jane Greer was exceptional as Kathie Moffat, but everyone in that picture was perfect, and the greatness of the movie as a whole went way beyond her performance. One reason it works so well is that practically all of the major characters, right down to the Kid, had a distinctive point of view about the events that were unfolding, and even the ones who weren't in on the main storyline were still interesting and colorful. Rhonda Fleming, as the THIRD female lead, was easily striking and sexy enough that her character could have been the lead in another movie of this type (better than anything Lisbeth Scott ever did, for example).
I see I was mistaken about the novel which is based on the same 1925 incident but isn't the basis for the movie. I just thought it was based on seeing it on TCM after reading the novel some years before.
Absence of Malice with Paul Newman and Sally Fields (and a small but not minor role by Wilfred Brimley) is a good one showing the seamy side of journalism, though its impact is diminished by the Sally Fields character feeling perhaps too-pat remorse. I love Ace in the Hole and thought it was a wild ride the first time I watched it--I like the idea of its being a flawed masterpiece with the ending. (Perhaps this was a time when irredeemably dark movies wouldn't sell in the mainstream. Though I don't know enough about noir to say that.) My Girl Friday doesn't exactly compliment journalists, but it's too jokey to classify as a takedown.
When you mentioned a list of movies about journalism or journalists, the one that immediately came to mind for me was "Absence of Malice", which is just a great movie with some great scenes. And what it says about journalism is so much more on target than say "All the President's Men", which is based on true events, but so glorifies those guys beyond reality.
Also glad to see "Year of Living Dangerously" high up on the list. A hugely underrated movie directed by Peter Weir. Honestly, those two are far better than most of the list which had some pretty lame movies listed. But then, the category doesn't apparently lend itself to great movies. They'd have to be honest portrayals to be great.
"Absence of Malice" was written by Kurt Luedtke, who also wrote "Out of Africa". Kurt was a Detroiter. I once worked in a restaurant in the suburbs there and Kurt was a semi-regular at the bar. I was told he'd leave metro Detroit and go up to a home in Northern Michigan to do his writing. This article gives a feel for who he was. Sounds a bit like Pete Hamill to me. They just don't make journalists like that anymore. Remembering Kurt Luedtke
Classic scene from "Absence of Malice"
@Saint Croix
Oh yes, Early Summer
North-of-the-101 writes, "Murder My Sweet, which is an adaptation of Farewell My Lovely, is a far better Phillip Marlowe film."
I disagree. While I truly admire Murder My Sweet, it's not as well acted. Robert Mitchum is a bit too old for Marlowe at that point in his career. (Farewell, My Lovey (1940) is the second PM novel.) Mitchum portrays Marlowe as jaded and thoroughly played-out, which doesn't fit Chandler's story as given. Mitchum would have been more suitable as Marlowe after his divorce from Linda Loring, some 18 years after the affair of Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle. Mitchum just doesn't have the charm of Marlowe as played by Bogart, particularly when Marlowe assumes the guise of a bookworm in search of a rare misprinted edition of Ben-Hur who is also anxious about missing a lecture about Egyptian "ser-ah-micks". I don't see Mirchum pulling that off even in his twenties. Furthermore, Charlotte Rampling bears no comparison to Lauren Bacall as the romantic interest. I wonder how she ever worked again after that phoned-in performance.
My favorite bad journalist movie is Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Thread over. Freeman Hunt wins.
Ace in the Hole is a good movie, but there's no way it's the best of 1951. I disagree with Saint Croix about whether it belongs in the top 10 for the year, but that's a quibble. If you were to get a random sample of TCM fans to list their favorite movies from 1951, I doubt a majority would include Ace in the Hole in their top 10. Top 20, sure. Very few would include it among their top 5.
Nor is Ace in the Hole the best example of a "journalists as jerks" movie. I think Sweet Smell of Success with Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster is a better example of that genre, if only because they are both total jerks. There might be even better examples of this type of movie. Sweet Smell of Success is simply the first that came to mind.
---On Dangerous Ground
Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino, directed by Nick Ray. Great exteriors, great. I happen to love Ida Lupino, but why not? Music by Hitchcock's best collaborator Bernard Herrmann, script by Buzz Bezzerides. Ryan does his underappreciated thing. A visual treat and an emotional workout.
Another in the journalists as jerks genre: Network.
Robert Mirchum... who the fuck is that?
"Ace in the Hole" is famous for another reason: it was the inspiration for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' "Big Girls Don't Cry."
The Seasons' terrific songwriter, Bob Gaudio, happened to be watching the movie and heard Jan Sterling speak that line.
Why is Kirk Douglas wearing suspenders with his belt?
“ "Ace in the Hole" is famous for another reason: it was the inspiration for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' "Big Girls Don't Cry."”
That’s how it’s portrayed in the movie of “Jersey Boys,” but per Wikipedia:
“ According to Gaudio, he was dozing off while watching the John Payne/Rhonda Fleming/Ronald Reagan movie Tennessee's Partner when he heard Payne's character slap Fleming in the face. After the slap, Fleming's character replied, "Big girls don't cry." Gaudio wrote the line on a scrap of paper, fell asleep, and wrote the song the next morning.[3][4] However, the line does not appear in that film. According to Bob Crewe, he was dozing off in his Manhattan home with the television on when he awoke to see Payne manhandling Fleming in Slightly Scarlet, a 1956 film noir based on a James M. Cain story. The line is heard in that film.[citation needed]”
Yeah, Sweet Smell for print; Network for broadcast.
Is there yet a great skewering of social media that measures up?
A Top Ten for 1951 is tough. So many good movies. To make it easier, I'll exclude foreign lanugage films:
An American in Paris
ALice in wonderland
Lavender Hill Mob
Scrooge (aka A Christmas Carol)
Streetcar Named Desire
African Queen
Captain Horatio Hornblower
Day the Earth Stood Still
Quo Vadis
Strangers on a Train
Of course the best movie about Journalism is "Citizen Kane".
Broadcast News should make the list, and i would place it above Network. The news networks were not in a battle for men's souls but rather for ratings. The journalists were not in a relentless search for truth, nor even for that matter were they in a cynical game of manipulating the truth to advance some nefarious scheme. The hero didn't need to be heroic or a truth teller, but to appear like a heroic truth teller. The hero of the movie uses his natural magnetism and good looks to fulfill that role. For such a journalist it's not cynicism but method acting that wins the game and the point of the game is to be rich and famous. The broadcast news people are not selling lies or truth but rather themselves.....I think Dan Rather, Brian Williams, et al. have given that game away, but they got away with it for quite a while. Broadcast News was not sufficiently cynic, but it got a lot of things right.
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