Great Scene: “Ace in the Hole”

The ending of the 1951 movie directed and co-written by Billy Wilder.

Billy Wilder followed up the award-winning movie Sunset Blvd. (1950) with the movie Ace In the Hole (1951). Here is the Wikipedia summary of the plot:

Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) is a fiercely ambitious, newly sober alcoholic reporter whose career in New York City has fallen into notoriety and decline. He has come west to New Mexico in a broken-down car, out of money and options. Tatum visits the office of the tiny Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin and asks the publisher, Boot (Porter Hall), if he would like to make $200 a week: “Mr. Boot, I’m a $250-a-week newspaperman. I can be had for $50.” Boot says, “In this shop we pay $60”, and brings Tatum on. However, he remains skeptical of his new hire.

For a year Tatum stays sober and works there uneventfully and unhappily. One day he and the newspaper’s young photographer, Herbie Cook (Robert Arthur), are assigned to cover a small-town rattlesnake hunt. Stopping for gasoline, they learn about Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), a local man who has become trapped in the collapse of a cliff dwelling while gathering ancient Indian artifacts. Tatum and Cook go in after the man and find they can get close enough to talk to him and pass him food and drink. Cook photographs him as Tatum tries to cheer him up.

But Tatum has sensed a golden opportunity to manipulate the rescue effort for publicity. After filing an initial report on the accident, he persuades the unscrupulous local sheriff, Kretzer (Ray Teal), to give him exclusive access to Leo in return for reportage that will guarantee Kretzer’s reelection. When the construction contractor, Smollett (Frank Jaquet), says it will take 12–16 hours to shore up the existing passages and safely get Minosa out, Tatum and Kretzer convince him to drill from above instead, which will take a week, keeping Tatum on newspaper front pages nationwide.

Lorraine Minosa (Jan Sterling), the victim’s wife, is eager to leave Leo and their struggling business, a combination trading post and restaurant in the middle of nowhere, but as tourists begin flocking to the rescue site, she experiences a financial windfall, and goes along with Tatum’s scheme. Cook also begins losing his idealism as he envisions himself selling pictures to Look or Life. Tatum and Cook quit the Sun-Bulletin and Tatum talks a New York editor into hiring him to report exclusively from the scene for $1,000 per day — and, more importantly, his old job back afterwards.

As days pass, the rescue site literally becomes an all-day carnival with rides, entertainment, games, and songs about Leo. Tatum begins drinking again. He takes up with Lorraine and is greeted heroically by the crowd each time he returns from visiting Leo. But, five days along, Leo develops pneumonia and the doctor gives him 12 hours to live without hospital treatment.

Remorseful, Tatum sends a news flash: Leo will now be rescued within 12 hours. But when he tells Smollett to stop drilling and shore up the walls, he learns that the vibration from drilling has made this impossible. Tatum now fights verbally and physically with Lorraine, and she stabs him in self-defense with a pair of scissors. Tatum gets the local priest, and takes him to Leo to administer the Last Rites. Leo subsequently dies.

Tatum orders the crew to stop drilling, then announces to the crowd that Leo has died, telling them to pack up and leave. Other reporters get on their newswires and report Leo’s death. As the carnival breaks down, the public packs up and moves out en masse, Lorraine among them.

During all this, Tatum has neglected to send copy to his New York editor. Tatum is fired and the other reporters gloat over his comedown. Drunk and slowly dying from the stab wound, Tatum calls the editor and tries to confess to killing Leo by delaying the rescue, but the editor hangs up on him.

Tatum corrals Cook into driving back to Albuquerque. Tatum makes a dramatic entrance into the Sun-Bulletin offices, calling for Boot. Tatum says: “How’d you like to make yourself $1,000 a day, Mr. Boot? I’m a $1,000-a-day newspaperman. You can have me for nothin’.” He then falls to the floor dead.

Here is the final scene as written in the script:

The movie version of the scene:

Here is Spike Lee talking about Ace In the Hole, one of his favorite Billy Wilder films and the movie’s final image.

“The final shot in this film in my opinion is one of the greatest final shots in cinema. I’ve never seen a shot that ends a film like that.”

Here is Billy Wilder talking about that shot from the book Conversations with Wilder:

The shot was always in my mind, but it wasn’t part of the script. I never put much camera direction into the screenplays. We dug a hole and put the camera there. We were sure he was going to end up in the hole himself. We knew he was gonna die. How he was going to die — that came in the writing of the thing. The shot we had as we wrote the script. The camera is down low because something’s gonna happen. It’s gonna pay off. And then Kirk Douglas falls into the close-up. I wanted something powerful, and that was one of the few times I went for a bold shot like that. I needed it, but I never based a scene around a shot. Never an outré shot. That was outlandish. Never to astonish people. It was logical there. Instead of — he falls down in a long shot, then we cut to the close-up.

Wilder was never a “fancy” director. Set the camera. Let the actors act. That was his philosophy. But occasionally, as here, he had a specific visual in mind. As it plays in the film, it is, indeed, one helluva shot.

For more articles in the Great Scene series, go here.