Туз в рукаве Ace in the Hole

1951 film by Billy Wilder

Ace in the Hole, also known as The Big Carnival, is a 1951 American drama film directed by Billy Wilder. The film stars Kirk Douglas as a cynical, disgraced reporter who stops at nothing to try to regain a job on a major newspaper. The film co stars Jan Sterling and features Robert Arthur and Porter Hall. It marked a series of firsts for auteur Billy Wilder: it was the first time he was involved in a project as a writer, producer, and director; his first film following his breakup with long time writing partner Charles Brackett, with whom he had collaborated on The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard, among others; and his first film to be a critical and commercial failure. The story is a biting examination of the seedy relationship between the press, the news it reports and the manner in which it reports it. The film also shows how a gullible public can be manipulated by the press. Without consulting Wilder, Paramount Pictures executive Y. Frank Freeman changed the title to The Big Carnival just prior to its release. Early television broadcasts retained that title, but when aired by Turner Classic Movies – and when released on DVD by The Criterion Collection in July 2007 – it reverted to Ace in the Hole. In 2017, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film is sometimes referred to as a film noir, More than 1,000 extras and 400 cars were utilized in the crowd scenes. After the film was completed, Paramount charged admission to the set. Frank Cady's character identifies himself as a salesman for Pacific All Risk Insurance, a fictitious company featured in Wilder's 1944 film Double Indemnity.

Jay Livingston and Ray Evans wrote the song "We're Coming, Leo," performed by a vocalist and band at the carnival.

The film has found new respect among critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times wrote in 2007, "Although the film is 56 years old, I found while watching it again that it still has all its power. It hasn't aged because Wilder and his co writers, Walter Newman and Lesser Samuels, were so lean and mean [with their dialogue] [Kirk Douglas'] focus and energy is almost scary. There is nothing dated about [his] performance. It's as right now as a sharpened knife." Dave Kehr in the Chicago Reader called it "cold, lurid, and fascinating" and Nathan Lee of The Village Voice wrote, "Here is, half a century out of the past, a movie so acidly au courant it stings." Time Out London wrote, "As a diatribe against all that is worst in human nature, it has moments dipped in pure vitriol." TV Guide called it "a searing example of writer director Billy Wilder at his most brilliantly misanthropic" and adds, "An uncompromising portrait of human nature at its worst, the film stands as one of the great American films of the 1950s." Ed Gonzalez of Slant wrote that the film " allowed Wilder to question the very nature of human interest stories and the twisted relationship between the American media and its public. More than 50 years after the film's release, when magazines compete to come up with the cattiest buzz terms and giddily celebrate the demise of celebrity relationships for buffo bucks, Ace in the Hole feels more relevant than ever." In his Slate review, Jack Shafer wrote in 2007: "If film noir illustrates the crackup of the American dream Ace in the Hole is an exemplar of the form." The film was included in film critic Roger Ebert's list of "The Great Movies" in 2007. In September 2008, Empire published its list of the Top 500 greatest movies of all time. With votes from 10,000 readers of the magazine along with 500 key film critics and 150 film industry figures, this film is ranked number 385. In 2015, the film ranked 100th on BBC's "100 Greatest American Films" list, voted on by film critics from around the world. In 2022, Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, in a Facebook "Noir or Not" segment stated that Ace in the Hole incorrectly gets labeled as a film noir because of director Wilder's other films Double Indemnity (1944) and Sunset Boulevard (1950), and because of the cynical storyline. Muller feels that Ace in the Hole is without many of the characteristics normally associated with film noir, and that it is more of a film about sleazy journalism.

The 1992 The Simpsons episode "Radio Bart" largely references the storyline of Ace in the Hole, featuring Bart Simpson lowering a portable radio into a well, and using a wireless microphone to broadcast his voice from it. He convinces the public that a boy named "Timmy O'Toole" had fallen into it, prompting news coverage and charity campaigns. Writer Jon Vitti noted that series creator Matt Groening "came in out of nowhere and just gave me, start to finish, the whole story."