The Horse's Head

#260) Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

OR “Brother, Can You Spare a Crime?”

Directed by Arthur Penn

Written by David Newman & Robert Benton

Class of 1992

The Plot: Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty are Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow, two Depression-era criminals only partially based on their real-life counterparts. Clyde meets Bonnie while trying to steal her mother’s car, and eventually convinces her to abandon her dead-end life in Dallas to rob banks with him. Joined later by getaway driver C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard), Clyde’s brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and Buck’s uptight wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons), the newly-minted Barrow Gang drive around the mid-west committing crimes and shooting anyone in their path. As the legends around them grow, so does Bonnie’s premonition that their infamy will end in tragedy.

Why It Matters: The NFR praises Penn, the screenwriters, Beatty and Dunaway, and says that the movie set “filmmaking and style trends that linger today”. There’s also an essay by film critic Richard Schickel, who takes the time to slam fellow critics Bosely Crowther (who hated the film) and Pauline Kael (who loved it).

But Does It Really?: “Bonnie and Clyde” is the Hollywood movie that dipped its toes into the waters of post-Code anti-heroes. The characters of Bonnie and Clyde were victims of the Depression that rebelled the only way they knew how, by robbing banks, and New Hollywood could finally tell their story in a bold, complex way. By today’s standard the violence is all very tame, but the restraint helps ground the film, as does Arthur Penn’s confident direction and pitch perfect performances from Beatty, Dunaway, and the whole ensemble. Like many in the 1967 roster, “Bonnie and Clyde” helped define a new era of filmmaking, and is a no-brainer for NFR inclusion.

Shout Outs: Bonnie, Clyde, and C.W. hide out in a movie house showing “Gold Diggers of 1933” following their first botched robbery together. The irony of “We’re In the Money” cannot be overstated.

Everybody Gets One: Actors Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard, and Denver Pyle, aka Uncle Jesse from “The Dukes of Hazzard”.

Wow, That’s Dated: Like “The Learning Tree”, “Bonnie and Clyde” is a New Hollywood movie with some of the trappings of an Old Hollywood studio film. Be on the lookout for rear projections and recycled Foley effects.

Seriously, Oscars?: “Bonnie and Clyde” led the Oscar pack (alongside “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”) with 10 nominations, including all of the “Big Five” categories. But 1967 was a strong year for movies, and the Academy spread the wealth among fellow NFR entries “The Graduate”, “In the Heat of the Night”, “Cool Hand Luke”, and the aforementioned “Dinner”. “Bonnie” managed two wins: Supporting Actress for Estelle Parsons (Blanche is the most sympathetic of the Barrow gang), and Cinematography for Old Hollywood cameraman Burnett Guffey.

Other notes

• Among the film’s historical inaccuracies (or oversimplifications): Clyde was not impotent (nor was he bisexual, as some have claimed), C.W. Moss is a fictional amalgamation of several fringe members of the Barrow gang, and Bonnie received third-degree burns from a car accident that permanently damaged her legs. But it’s the real Blanche Barrow who suffers the most. Unlike her film counterpart, Blanche was fully aware of her husband’s criminal record and was a more active participant in the robberies. Blanche lived long enough to see the film and famously griped that Estelle Parsons’ performance “made me look like a screaming horse’s ass.”
• This film has one of my all time favorite taglines: “They’re young…they’re in love…and they kill people.”
• Right off the bat you’re rooting for these two. Beatty and Dunaway’s natural chemistry is aided by some very smart screenwriting. These aren’t two historical figures spouting off researched facts, these are two screwed-up people trying to get their lives together.
• Michael J. Pollard definitely took his Strother Martin lessons. I presume Pollard was a winner of the Truman Capote lookalike contest.
• This has got to be one of the rare movies where all five of the lead actors are still with us 50 years later. I will of course use this platform to urge Gene Hackman to make one more movie. Do you really want your swan song to be “Welcome to Mooseport”?
• What’s louder in this movie: the gunplay or Estelle Parsons?

• Pretty amazing that the Barrow Gang never runs out of gas during their getaways.
• The best line in the movie: “And I’m bringing me a mess of flowers to their funeral”.
• Oh Gene Wilder. Even in your film debut your screen persona is in full bloom (“Step on it, Velma!”).

• The Parker family reunion scene was allegedly filmed with a window screen to give it a nostalgic filter. One of the locals gathered to watch the filming was Texan schoolteacher Mabel Cavitt, who was cast on the spot as Bonnie’s mother.
• I have to say, for notorious bank robbers, Bonnie & Clyde don’t rob a lot of banks. If anything they should have gone down for their chronic carjacking.
• One of the film’s more commendable aspects is that it manages to be a realistic love story without being too romantic or sensual. Any chance of this film being a conventional movie romance is deflated (for lack of a better term) early on, but ultimately these are two people who genuinely care about each other and accept their unified fate.
• Man, that ending is something else. So much storytelling happening in such quick cuts. It’s brutally tragic. Or is it tragically brutal? Regardless, A+ everyone.

Legacy

• “Bonnie and Clyde” was buried in limited release by Warner Bros., but resurrected by critics and audiences (including such new young voices as Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael) to become one of the top-grossing hits of 1967. This success jump-started the careers of everyone involved in the film.
• Many have tried to do a more accurate biopic of Bonnie & Clyde (including a recent TV miniseries), and while they are more factual, they’re just not as exciting.

• Perhaps my favorite spin-off from this film’s popularity: the short-lived Warner Bros. cartoon series “Bunny and Claude”. They rob carrot patches.

• But the greatest robbery Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway ever pulled was robbing “Moonlight” of its Best Picture glory.

Listen to This: “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”, everybody! Lester Flatts and Earl Scruggs’ quintessential reckless car chase banjo music was added to the National Recording Registry in 2004, thanks in part to its anachronistic inclusion in “Bonnie and Clyde”.

#259) I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)

OR “Orange Is the New Black & White”

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy

Written by Howard J. Green & Brown Holmes. Based on the autobiography by Robert E. Burns.

Class of 1991

The Plot: James Allen (Paul Muni) has just returned home from World War I, and declines a desk job at the family business to pursue his dream of being a civil engineer. He travels the country for employment, but work is hard to come by, and soon he is out of money. After being arrested during a robbery he was forced to participate in, James is sentenced to a chain gang, where he endures hard labor for months on end. After a year, James escapes to Chicago and makes himself a successful engineer/model citizen. But will his past come back to haunt him?

Why It Matters: The NFR praises Muni and director LeRoy, and cites the film’s influence on the prison genre.

But Does It Really?: “Chain Gang” is another one of those movies that I’ve heard of, but couldn’t tell you why it’s a classic. It turns out the film’s slip from the shortlist of classics isn’t necessarily its own fault. There’s nothing wrong with the film; it’s quite good actually. It’s just been eclipsed over the years by better movies: “The Great Escape”, “The Shawshank Redemption”, and the definitive chain gang film: “Cool Hand Luke”. There’s some great work being done throughout, especially by Paul Muni, but there have been so many other classics in the last 85 years that this movie gets lost in the shuffle. “Chain Gang” is worth a watch, but definitely not as a double feature with “Cool Hand Luke”. Give it a chance to work on its own.

Everybody Gets One: The film’s main takeaway is the man himself: Robert Elliott Burns. “Chain Gang” is very faithful to his real life story. Like James Allen, Burns was a WWI veteran who couldn’t find work, was caught up in a diner robbery, and escaped from a chain gang. He became the editor of Greater Chicago Magazine and started publishing a serial that would become his memoir “I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang!” After his second escape, Burns spent a few weeks in Burbank helping Paul Muni prepare for the film, and even contributed some dialogue to the screenplay.

Wow, That’s Dated: Chain gangs, that’s your big one. Chain gangs were commonplace in the South for most of the late 1800s/early 1900s, but were eventually phased out by the mid-‘50s. Alabama, however, tried to bring back chain gangs in the ‘90s, which means it’ll probably come back again soon. Stupid cyclical nostalgia trends.

Seriously, Oscars?: “Chain Gang” was nominated for three Oscars at the 6^th Academy Awards. Paul Muni lost Best Actor to Charles Laughton in “The Private Life of Henry VIII” (the first instance of an Oscar going to a foreign film) and Best Picture that year went to “Cavalcade”. You know, that classic. Most bizarre is the film’s third nomination: sound engineer Nathan Levinson faced such competition as…himself for “42^nd Street” and…himself for “Gold Diggers of 1933”. But the winner for Sound Recording turned out to be the only non-Levinson: Franklin Hansen for Paramount’s “A Farewell to Arms”.

Other notes

• Having clips of your cast during the opening credits is a massive spoiler. Great, now I know this movie has a judge, a warden, AND a Texan!
• Another pre-code gem: the Texan says someone’s gonna be “S.O.L.” if they mess with him. And he ain’t talking about the Satellite of Love.
• Who dreams of getting into construction work? What are you, one of the Village People?
• While James is riding the rails, he should say hi to those Wild Boys of the Road.
• This movie got me to wondering when we switched prison uniforms from black and white stripes to orange jumpsuits. Turns out we were already phasing out the stripes around the time of this film, with the intention of making the uniforms more rehabilitative than punishing. At one point we tried out denim, as seen in “Cool Hand Luke”.
• Mervyn LeRoy seems to be having fun cutting from the prisoners to the horses. Nice metaphor.
• James’ escape is still pretty suspenseful and exciting to watch. But why the occasional under-cranking? Could Paul Muni not run?
• At one point James is reading “Civil Engineering” by J.J. Robertson. Any relation to J.K. Robertson? Is he a team player?
• So much of this film’s transitions are paperwork. Newspapers, contracts, letters. Is this movie applying for a Real ID?
• Paul Muni kinda looks like Glenn Ford.
• “How do you live?” “I steal.” Great final exchange, but like the film in general, its standing as one of the great film endings has been surpassed by many later films.
• The moral of this movie: Never turn down a desk job. Your dreams will lead to nothing but a life of crime.

Legacy

• The success of the movie (as well as the book) led to the eventual abolition of the chain gang system in America. Robert Burns was pardoned in the state of Georgia in 1945.
• Robert Burns’ real story was made into the 1987 TV movie “The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains”. Apparently the 1987 equivalent of Paul Muni was Val Kilmer.

#258) Primary (1960) 

OR “The Dairyland Diaries”

Directed & Written by Robert Drew

Class of 1990

The Plot: It’s 1960 and the White House is up for grabs in the upcoming presidential election. Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey is the presumed front-runner for the Democratic nomination, but Senator John Kennedy from Massachusetts thinks he can rock the vote. After easily winning the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy challenges Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary of April 1960 to prove he can carry the kind of mid-west state that Humphrey prides himself on having a connection with. Humphrey pounds the pavement: shaking hands, kissing babies, pledging to look out for the average farmer once elected. Kennedy, along with his glamorous wife Jackie and the rest of his famous family, sets out to prove that his Catholic upbringing is nothing Protestant America needs to fear. And in the midst of all of this, filmmaker Robert Drew is using the proceedings to create a new kind of documentary.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film “new territory in documentary film making” and states that “[m]odern political and news reporting owes much to the audacity of this film’s invasive technique.”

But Does It Really?: Oh of course. “Primary” was a game-changer for documentaries. Long before we had wall-to-wall news coverage of every political movement, “Primary” was a rare glimpse at what it takes to run for president in this country, and the toll it takes on anyone who thinks they’re up to the task. The film is engaging, surprisingly suspenseful (considering that you know how it ends), and worth a watch for its artistic merits as well as for its historical significance. Plus it’s less than an hour long. Any filmmaker who can make that big an impact in only 53 minutes is worthy of recognition.

Everybody Gets One: This isn’t his only NFR appearance, but attention must be paid to Robert Drew. Drew was a writer for Life magazine and had a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard when he started to focus on filmmaking, specifically asking the question, “Why are documentaries so dull?” He founded Drew Associates, hired a murderers’ row of future notable filmmakers, and in the process created what we now know as Direct Cinema. Minimal narration, no forced storylines, just a camera covering real life in real time. What it all means is left up to you, the audience.

Wow, That’s Dated: Kennedy’s campaign song was a rewritten version of the then-current hit song “High Hopes”.

Seriously, Oscars?: I’m not sure if “Primary” premiered in theaters or on television in 1960, but the Oscar winner that year for Best Documentary was “The Horse with the Flying Tail”. So to answer your question: no, the Oscars weren’t quite ready to embrace direct cinema in 1960. Robert Drew was never nominated for an Oscar, but he did win an Emmy in 1969 for a documentary about choreographer Edward Villella. So that’s something.

Other notes

• Yes yes, I am aware that the photo I used for this post is from the West Virginia primary a month after the events of this film. But hey, it’s the best photo I could find.
• The cameramen used for the film were all employees of Robert Drew’s film company Drew Associates. Among them, future documentarians Richard Leacock, Albert Maysles, and D.A. Pennebaker.
• Part of me says we should bring back campaign songs, and part of me definitely does not want that.
• Remember the film professor I mentioned who always name-dropped Errol Morris? Apparently he’s one of the younger volunteers for the Kennedy campaign in this movie. He brought that up a lot too. Weirdly, he always referred to Jackie Kennedy as “Jackie O”, even though she didn’t get that nickname until she married Aristotle Onassis in 1968.
• Speaking of, I hate when people get their kids involved in campaigning. I know it’s important to teach your kids about democracy, but I’m not voting for Kennedy just because your daughter thinks he’s “dreamy”.
• Don’t know a lot about Hubert Humphrey, other than he was Johnson’s VP and lost to Nixon in ’68, but he seems like everyone’s uncle. I suspect like Adlai Stevenson before him, Humphrey didn’t cut it because he wasn’t “exciting” enough.
• Say what you will about Kennedy, he knew how to work a crowd.
• Does anyone know the Polish phrase that Jackie says? Subtitles only tell me that it’s “Non-English Speech”. Real helpful.
• Man, I knew Kennedy’s Catholicism was an issue in his campaign, but I did not realize just how big an issue it was. Some people were worried Kennedy would take his orders from the Pope. A president being controlled by a foreign leader? What a ridiculous thing that’s actually happening.
• Jeez after all of that, they’re “about where they stood before the primary”? Democracy sucks.

Legacy

• Every documentary made since 1960 can trace its lineage back to “Primary”. Not that’s a legacy.
• Although Kennedy defeated Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary, it was by such a small margin (in a predominantly Catholic state) that Humphrey stayed in the race. He eventually dropped out when Kennedy won the West Virginia primary in May 1960.
• Also in the running for the 1960 election was Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. Kennedy selected Johnson as his running mate shortly after clinching the party nomination.
• Robert Drew got access to the Kennedy White House in fellow NFR documentary “Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment”.

Further Viewing: The 1960 presidential election was the first to feature televised debates. Kennedy faced Republican nominee Richard Nixon on four separate occasions, with Nixon learning about how to appear “TV friendly” along the way.

Listen to This: “The First Family” was a gentle satirizing of JFK and his time in the White House. The album was a surprise runaway hit, led by comedian Vaughn Meader’s pitch-perfect impression of Kennedy. As quickly as he rose, however, Meader’s star plummeted following Kennedy’s tragic assassination. While largely forgotten now, “The First Family” was a breakthrough for comedy albums, and proof that sketch comedy wasn’t just relegated to the sanitized airwaves of broadcast television. For the record: Kennedy thought the lampooning was hilarious and allegedly gave out copies of the album as Christmas gifts.

#257) Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916)

OR “Four of a Kind”

Directed by D.W. Griffith

Written by Everybody, all of them uncredited

The Plot: As Eternal Motherhood (Lillian Gish) rocks the cradle of each passing generation, four stories of intolerance play out over four different historical eras. The religious conflict between Prince Belshazzar and Cyrus the Great (Alfred Paget and George Siegmann) leads to the fall of Babylon. The compassionate teachings of Christ (Howard Gaye) are ignored by the people of ancient Judea, and the man is crucified. Another religious battle leads to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, led by Queen-mother Catherine de Medici (Josephine Cromwell) to wipe out the Huguenots from Catholic France. And a modern (1916) story of a poor young woman (Mae Marsh) and her hardworking husband (Robert Harron) whose lives are oppressed by a group of social elites promoting upright values. All this, plus the kind of epic filmmaking that only D.W. Griffith could provide.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film no less than “one of the masterpieces of the silent era” and praises Griffith’s technological breakthroughs. In addition, there’s an essay by Benjamin Schrom, who is referred to as “an avid film fan and product manager for Google Education.” Come on! Every other movie gets a film scholar but this one gets some guy from Google? Hell, by that standard I’m more qualified to write one of these things (and I wouldn’t say no, NFR).

But Does It Really?: I’m gonna chalk this one up to historical significance. “Intolerance” is definitely worthy of early inclusion on this list, if just for its monumental undertaking and effective juxtaposition between its four storylines. Entertainment-wise it’s…fine. I found myself in awe of the production value and not necessarily involved in the stories. Griffith’s grandiose technical side always outshined his oversimplified storylines. “Intolerance” is worth a watch for all you serious film buffs, but once is enough.

Wow, That’s Dated: The “modern” story deals with pre-union American labor, the stigma of fatherless children, and the common punishment of hanging criminals. Plus there’s a reference to the relatively current song “In the Good Old Summer Time”.

Other notes

• The films alternate subtitle is “A Sun-Play of the Ages”. Does anyone know what a Sun-Play is? The internet says it’s an online swimming pool supply warehouse, but I have my doubts that was Griffith’s intention.
• Pretty ballsy to make “The Birth of a Nation” and then immediately follow up with a movie called “Intolerance”. The story goes that Griffith made this film in response to those who were critical of “Birth of a Nation”. Yeah, people who disapprove of a movie that glorifies the Klan are so intolerant. Are we sure Griffith doesn’t have a Twitter account?
• Lillian Gish plays the Eternal Mother, in what must have been her easiest paycheck ever: sit there, rock a cradle, and enter film immortality. Side note: The title cards in these sequences have lines lifted from “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” by…Walt Whitman! Look at that handsome undercover Mark Twain.

• The intertitles have footnotes! Griffith shows off his historical accuracy with information dispersed throughout the film. This may be the only movie on the list with an appendix.
• Griffith clearly blew the budget on the Babylon set, and he makes sure to include plenty of shots showing it off.

• I was following everything just fine up until the 1572 scenes. Someone get me a flow chart!
• Nice touch having different backdrops for each era’s intertitles.
• Thanks to the headbands, everyone in the Babylon scenes looks like an ‘80s rocker.
• To this day, most labor disputes are still settled using cannons. I’m just glad my union has health care.
• Mae Marsh is the Sandy Dennis of the silent era: so many tics.
• Shoutout to assinu, the androgynous servants of Ishtar.
• Not only does actor Howard Gaye portray Jesus in this film, but he was also Robert E. Lee in “Birth of a Nation”. How many actors can say that?
• We need to bring back the adjective “Christly”. “Everyone applauded Jane for her Christly charity work.”
• “Intolerance” isn’t so much four stories as it is two with special guest appearances. Griffith clearly favored the Babylon and modern stories, with the Christ plotline being used mostly as a linchpin. The St. Bartholomew scenes feel like an afterthought; they are to this movie what “The Watch” is to “Pulp Fiction”.
• Wow, the fall of Babylon is epic. This alone is worth the price of admission. Blink and you’ll miss a man get decapitated!

• In another moment of keen cinematic foresight, you can see Griffith futzing with aspect ratio. Certain shots would fit on today’s widescreen TVs, and a few others look like they were filmed portrait style on someone’s phone.
• The modern scenes feel a lot like “Musketeers of Pig Alley: Part 2”. For those of you who remember that post, that’s not necessarily a compliment.
• Yeah, Griffith definitely had issues with women. In every era of this movie the women are either victims, property, or unjustifiably evil.
• The intercutting between the four stories at the climax must have been an intense viewing experience 100 years ago. It’s pretty much the same template intercutting has followed ever since.
• Eternal Mother’s been rocking that cradle for three hours. Is that kid ever going to sleep?

Legacy

• “Intolerance” was not the box office bomb some have labeled it as. The film made a lot of money, but since Griffith backed most of the movie he suffered financially for the rest of his life, even with hits like “Broken Blossoms” and “Way Down East”.
• Griffith knew he had enough footage on his hands for more than one movie, and in 1919 he used that material to create two new films: “The Fall of Babylon” and “The Mother and the Law” (the latter being the working title for “Intolerance”). Griffith’s one mistake: he used the original negative for “Intolerance”, making future restorations nearly impossible.

• Buster Keaton spoofed the film’s overall concept with 1923’s “Three Ages”.

• The elephants on the Babylon set were recreated for the Hollywood and Highland Center, and the former Hollywood Pictures Backlot at Disney’s California Adventure.

• I’m gonna blame this film for every movie that covers a central theme over different eras; such notable examples being “The Hours”, “If These Walls Could Talk”, and…uh…. “If These Walls Could Talk 2”?

#256) Ace in the Hole (1951)

OR “The Big Carnival” (Seriously, that’s the films other title)

Directed by Billy Wilder

Written by Wilder & Lesser Samuels & Walter Newman

Class of 2017

The Plot: Down on his luck reporter Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) has been fired from a big New York paper and has landed at the much more rural Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. After a year of small town news, Chuck learns about local man Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) trapped in a nearby cave. Although a quick rescue is being planned, Chuck is able to delay things in order to play up the story in the newspaper. Chuck manages to corrupt Leo’s wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) and the town sheriff (Ray Teal) in the process, the Sun-Bulletin’s circulation skyrockets, and a pickup from the Associated Press leads to the cave site being visited by thousands of onlookers. Is all of this journalistic aggrandizement worth the life of one man?

Why It Matters: The NFR spends most of the write-up on a plot synopsis, but does call the film “[a] deeply cynical look at journalism” and “a scathing tale of media manipulation”.

But Does It Really?: Hmmm…how did a movie about sensationalizing the news make the NFR in 2017? I wonder….

“Ace in the Hole” is one of those “wasn’t that already on the list” kinda movies; you know it’s regarded as a classic, but it’s not on the top of anyone’s list. “Ace” is definitely a minor classic compared to Wilder’s other work, but should absolutely be commended for its prescient takedown of yellow journalism and the public that eats it up. For all of this film’s pros (and there are plenty), it never fires on all cylinders the way you want a classic to. Wilder had just ended his writing partnership with Charles Brackett, and the screenplay suffers a bit from this new collaboration. “Ace in the Hole” is sub-par Wilder, but that’s still better than most directors’ best. Worth a watch, but as its belated NFR induction indicates, it’s not appointment viewing.

Shout Outs: Federber works for Pacific All-Risk, the same insurance company from “Double Indemnity”.

Everybody Gets One: Walter Newman was relatively new to screenwriting when he worked with Wilder on “Ace”, while Lesser Samuels was coming fresh off of his Oscar-nominated work penning the social drama “No Way Out”. Jan Sterling’s career was just taking off when she played Lorraine Minosa, and she was a few years shy of her Oscar-nominated performance in “The High and the Mighty”.

Wow, That’s Dated: Quick references to Life and Look Magazine, plus a meditation on the lost culture of Roadside America. On a more upsetting note, this movie has enough casual racism towards Native Americans to make John Ford blush.

Take a Shot: Chuck says the title just once when talking up the story to Sheriff Kretzer. I like to think they dubbed over the line when they changed the title. “What’d you have, pair of deuces? This is better; here we’ve got an [The Big Carnival].”

Seriously, Oscars?: Well, something had to follow “Sunset Boulevard”. “Ace in the Hole” didn’t go over well with either critics or audiences, but did manage one Oscar nomination for its screenplay, losing to “An American in Paris”. No one was ready to praise a movie that, as the Hollywood Reporter put it at the time, “is nothing more than an uncalled-for slap in the face of two respected and frequently effective American institutions – democratic government and the free press.” Wow, that’s dated.

Other notes

• Here’s a rarity amongst NFR films; “Ace in the Hole” has a second title. Shortly before the film’s release, Paramount renamed it “The Big Carnival”. Wilder disapproved and eventually got “Ace in the Hole” restored, but TV prints carried the “Carnival” name for several decades.
• “Ace in the Hole” was inspired by two real-life events: the Floyd Collins entrapment of 1925, and the similar Kathy Fiscus rescue of 1949. Both events received a massive amount of media attention, simultaneously demonstrating the mass power and exploitation of anyone making national news.
• If you’re going to replace Charles Brackett, why pick one of the Lesser Samuels?
• Between this and “The Bad and the Beautiful”, Kirk Douglas loves playing unapologetically assertive characters. I haven’t seen “Lust for Life”, but was Van Gogh like this?
• If the copy boy at the beginning looks familiar, it’s because he saw you litter.
• Oh Leo, how dumb are you? And while you’re down there, can you tell The Goonies “Hey you guuuuuys!”
• Yeah, there’s something missing from this script. If nothing else, this film is concrete evidence of what the likes of Charles Brackett and I.A.L. Diamond contributed to a Billy Wilder movie.
• Best line in the movie: “I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.”
• The carnival that sets up near the cave is provided by “The Great S&M Amusement Corp.” Phrasing.
• Every character in this film falls for the old movie trope of repeating everything in a phone conversation for exposition.
• Chuck says his journalism isn’t “below-the-belt” but rather “right in the gut”. Well, in the ‘50s everyone wore their belts higher up, so two things can be true.
• Character actor Porter Hall plays Sun-Bulletin editor Mr. Boot, and it may be his finest film performance. He adds a brief touch of humanity to the proceedings.
• How did “We’re Coming, Leo” not get a Best Song nomination? I still have it stuck in my head!

• Well that ending took a turn.

Legacy

• This movie’s legacy definitely got off on the wrong foot. Wilder was sued for plagiarism by a screenwriter named Victor Desny, who claimed he had pitched a Floyd Collins movie to Wilder in 1949. The court ruled in favor of Wilder, but an appeal led to Wilder settling with Desny in 1956.
• “Ace in the Hole” was Wilder’s first flop with critics and audiences, but he bounced back with his next picture: 1953’s “Stalag 17”.

• Wilder didn’t work with either of his “Ace” screenwriters again. Walter Newman would continue writing screenplays, among them “Cat Ballou” and “The Magnificent Seven”, while Lesser Samuels’ only major screenplay after “Ace” was “The Silver Chalice”, which is notorious for how bad it is.

• “Radio Bart” takes a lot from “Ace in the Hole”, right down to the inspirational song.