Martini Musing - Ace in the Hole
This is a Friday Fun post. If you want to read a marketing biz post, go to Lip-Sticking and my guest post, Marketing: Not All Women Are Moms.
“I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my stockings.” - Jan Sterling, one of the all-time great one-liners from 1951 “noir in broad daylight” classic , Ace In The Hole.
Ace In The Hole is Billy Wilder at his darkest and most cynical - and that’s saying something for the director of Sunset Boulevard. (As Wikipedia notes, Ace is “a cynical examination of the seedy relationship between the media and the news it reports and the manner in which it reports it.”)
I love Ace for four reasons:
1. It was filmed in Albuquerque and near Gallup way back in 1951.
2. It’s Kirk Douglas at his rip-snorting, over-the-top, scenery-chewing best. You can’t not watch him.
3. No happy, sappy wrap-it-up Hollywood ending. This is how such things can and do play out in real life.
4. It sums up everything that is wrong with our sensation-seeking, celebrity-maddened society (and this in a 1951 film! The more things change…) Nobody is blameless. (”This just in! Heath Ledger is still dead! See his girlfriend crying in close-up! See John Travolta get all teary! Breaking News: Heath Ledger is still dead…”)
I could stretch a bit here and tie this to some bloggy point about marketing, but - aw, Hell - just watch the movie. It’s terrific.
Happy Friday!
Other film noir recommendations:
Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum and teeth-knashin’ Kirk.
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, director) My Three Sons’ white bread Dad Fred MacMurray playing a sex-besotted rat very believably.
Mildred Pierce. Worth watching just for Joan Crawford’s valiant struggle to change expressions while on camera…and then there are those shoulder pads…
Sweet Smell of Success. Burt Lancaster channeling Walter Mitchell. Tony Curtis is craven. Great B&W NYC shots. Things don’t go well for the “innocents.” Great stuff.
Not really “noir” but Kirk being really bad again - and ever so charming and watchable: The Bad and the Beautiful (with a breath-takingly gorgeous Lana Turner.)
Read More: All my Friday Martini Time posts (some fun, some serious, pretty much all irreverent.)
Tags: Friday martini time, Mary Schmidt, film noir
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