Saturday Matinee: Walter Chaw Talks Ace in the Hole, 1951

"Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole almost requires an honorary expansion of the term film noir. There are no private eyes in seedy offices or femmes fatales lurking in the shadows of neon-lit doorways, no forces of evil arrayed against a relatively honorable hero. This emotional snake pit, the darkest of Wilder’s dark meditations on American folkways, takes place under the relentless sun of the flat New Mexican desert. The noir is interior—inside a mountain tunnel where a man is trapped and suffocating, and inside the mind of a reporter rotting from accumulated layers of self-induced moral grime." -- Molly Haskell, criterion.com

Join film critic Walter Chaw to talk about this film. Ace in the Hole is free to watch on the streaming service Kanopy which you can subscribe to using your library card. Not a Kanopy member yet? Grab your library card and get started here.

 If you would like to attend this film discussion online, please register here for the event and your login and password will be sent to you the day before the event. Upcoming Saturday Matinee events for the September and October will be announced soon.