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The image is drawn swiftly, a New York jackal amid lemmings in a desert that might be Stroheim's. Stranded in the "sun-baked Siberia" of New Mexico, the big-city reporter (Kirk Douglas) seeks a scoop and finds it when a spelunker (Richard Benedict) is pinned at the bottom of a collapsed mine. "Human interest" and "sensational copy," the article paints the mountain as a haunted tomb and the victim's derisive gal (Jan Sterling) as a virtuous wife. When "Mr. and Mrs. America" drop by to gawk, the journalist's piratical moxie skyrockets—news wither fast ("Tomorrow this will be yesterday's paper and they'll wrap a fish in it") so he contrives to delay the man's rescue, milk the public's lust for spectacle, and auction himself off to editors. The literal circus that ensues (fairground rides, cowboy bands, political deals) has the blessing of the sheriff (Ray Teal), whose pet rattlesnake feasts on bubblegum. "I don't make things happen. All I do is write about them." Between Meet John Doe and Network, the abominable artist and the insectoid mob-audience in Billy Wilder's angriest film. Douglas and Sterling match each other in guile, he slaps the smile off her face and then grabs her by the bleached pelt in a continuation of Double Indemnity's acrid pas de deux. The embroidered newsroom motto ("Tell the Truth") becomes the crucifix in the trading post, the drill pounds the mountaintop and the sinner's mind. Wilder dissolves from the doomed schnook under the rocks to his wife overseeing the show ("The Great S&M Amusement Corp." is pulling in), then cuts, stingingly, from eager tourists to the old man (John Berkes) who can't quite believe the carnival around his son's tragedy. Strangulation by fur coat and scissors to the guts for "the gentlemen of the press," and two decades later there's The Front Page. With Robert Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady, Lewis Martin, Frances Dominguez, Gene Evans, and Frank Jaquet. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |