Ace in the Hole is nasty. I mean that in a totally positive way. I've always thought that, even though he made other movies that came closer to the subject (like A Foreign Affair, another great one, but hampered by an unappealing leading man), Ace in the Hole came closest to reflecting Wilder's experience as a refugee from Hitler's Germany. Just that ubercynical sense of the masses as totally susceptible to being manipulated by propaganda serving the interests of a top-to-bottom corrupt power structure.
