The Wild One (Laslo Benedek, 1953)

Mary Murphy and Marlon Brando in The Wild One

Cast: Marlon Brando, Mary Murphy, Robert Keith, Lee Marvin, Jay C. Flippen, Peggy Maley, Hugh Sanders, Ray Teal, John Brown, Will Wright, Robert Osterloh, William Vedder, Yvonne Doughty. Screenplay: John Paxton, based on a story by Frank Rooney. Cinematography: Hal Mohr. Production design: Rudolph Sternad. Film editing: Al Clark. Music: Leith Stevens.

The best performance in The Wild One isn't Marlon Brando's, it's Lee Marvin as Chino, the head of a rival motorcycle gang. Marvin brings a looseness and wit to the role that is lacking in Brando's performance, though the role itself calls on Brando to do little but act sullen. He also looks a little porky in his jeans and leather jacket, and his somewhat high-pitched voice gives an epicene quality to Johnny Strabler, leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club. Brando does, however, get the film's most familiar line: When Johnny is asked what he's rebelling against, he's drumming to the beat of the music on the jukebox and retorts, "What've you got?" But it's a measure of the general mediocrity of The Wild One that this exchange is immediately reprised by someone telling others about Johnny's retort, essentially stepping on the line. There are a few good moments in the film, mostly contributed by Marvin and by some effective choreography of the motorcycle riders, as in the scene in which good girl Kathie Bleeker (Mary Murphy) is menaced by the gang and then rescued by Johnny. But censorship sapped the life out of the film: The motorcycle gangs are scarcely more intimidating than fraternity boys on a spree. There's an attempt to spice things up with a scene between Johnny and Britches (Yvonne Doughty), a female hanger-on with the rival gang, suggesting that they once had something going on, but the bit goes nowhere and seems mainly designed to allow the actress to display her perky breasts in a tight sweater. As with any of the countless biker movies that capitalized on the box office success of The Wild One, there's a queer subtext to be explicated in all this male bonding, but it doesn't add much to a movie that now seems as dated as the flaming youth films of the 1920s.

Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951)

Jan Sterling and Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole

Chuck Tatum: Kirk Douglas
Lorraine Minosa: Jan Sterling
Herbie Cook: Robert Arthur
Jacob Q. Boot: Porter Hall
Al Federber: Frank Cady
Leo Minosa: Richard Benedict
Sheriff Gus Kretzer: Ray Teal

Director: Billy Wilder
Screenplay: Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman
Cinematography: Charles Lang
Music: Hugo Friedhofer

Ace in the Hole has a reputation as one of Billy Wilder's most bitter and cynical films. But today, when media manipulation is such a commonplace topic of discourse, it seems a little shy of the mark: After all, the manipulation in the movie seems to be the work of one man, Chuck Tatum, who milks the story of a man trapped in a cave-in to rehabilitate his own career. Other media types, including the editor and publisher of the small Albuquerque paper Tatum uses to springboard back into the big time, seem more conscientious about telling the truth. As we've seen time and again, it's the audience (the ratings, the ad dollars) that drives the news, with the journalists often reluctantly following. Wilder's screenplay, written with Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman, certainly blames them (or us) for the magnitude of Tatum's manipulation, but the focus on one unscrupulous reporter makes the media the primary evil. Maybe it's just because I've been following the Trump campaign this summer, and just watched the stunning eight-hour documentary about O.J. Simpson on ESPN, O.J.: Made in America, that I'm inclined to blame the great imbalance in what gets covered as news on the audience at least as much as on the reporters and editors who cater to their tastes. That said, Ace in the Hole is pretty effective movie-making -- so much so that it's surprising to learn that it was one of Wilder's biggest flops. It has some terrific lines, like the one from Lorraine, the trampy wife of the cave-in victim: When told by Tatum that she should go to church to keep up the appearance that she's still in love with her husband, she retorts, "I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons." Porter Hall, one of Hollywood's great character actors, is wonderfully wry as the editor forced by Tatum into hiring him, and Robert Arthur, one of Hollywood's perennial juveniles, does good work as Herbie, the young reporter corrupted by Tatum's ambition. Sterling spent her long career typecast as a floozy, but that's probably because she did such a good job of it. Douglas is, as usual, intense, which has always made me feel a little ambivalent about him as an actor; I wish he would unclench occasionally, but I admire his willingness to take on such an unlikable role and make the character ... well, unlikable. He's the right actor for Wilder, who seems to be on the verge of trying to give Tatum a measure of redemption, but can't quite let himself do it.