In a world where sting journalism and "We Got It First" stories stand poised to wipe out any semblance of sanity and the human touch in journalism, it was interesting to watch a movie that was way ahead of its time in profiling the Rise of the Paparazzi. In Billy Wilder's Ace In The Hole, a bounty hunter gets trapped in a cave, and dies an agonizing death thanks to some truly amoral opportunistic reportage (Kirk Douglas), helped along in no small measure by vixenish wives, ambitious sheriffs, and the competition with whom Kirk Douglas has more than a score to settle. And this casts the sanity of a grieving mother or a few voices of reason that question the sense of a convoluted procedure that ultimately takes too long, far into the background. Charlie Tatum watches the rise of a Great Farce where the object of an exclusive scoop gradually becomes the focal point of a great (and somewhat exaggerated) circus. The end is sombre as the reality of news served as entertainment sinks into our protagonist, and he makes some amends to that effect. A movie to make one pause and think, but given that this was made back in 1951, and journalism, well, is what it is today, it is quite clear that the world did not pause and think all that much.
