When I imagine making a movie in New Mexico I see the land unfolding before me like a note found tucked in the pages of a used book—a window looking out onto something beautiful from the walls of a deteriorating stronghold.
*
Wilder doesn’t give much voice to his indigenous characters, and, for the majority of the film, holds back from filming any sweeping vistas. Most of Wilder’s films are city films. His characters spark their repartee back and forth over bustling city sounds, in busy offices, down apartment hallways. Ace in the Hole’s cynical message would seem suited to such an environment—one of cutthroat ambition, where everyone’s trying to get ahead. But the film doesn’t take place in a city. It doesn’t even unfold in Albuquerque. Its action progresses miles outside of any real town, any real hub of residential or commercial life. This backdrop is, of course, a purposeful juxtaposition to Tatum’s ugly city morality—and a call to our own blindness to what really matters. It is also, I think, there to communicate a pretty radical message (for its time) about white America’s exploitation of the land and of indigenous people.
As Tatum enters the offices of the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin for the first time, he passes a Native American employee and smirks an exaggerated “How” at him, complete with a condescending stereotypical hand gesture. “Good afternoon, sir,” says the man in return, without missing a beat. It’s one of our first glimpses of Tatum’s attitude towards others; that Wilder chose to highlight his superior attitude to an indigenous professional is no accident.
Later in the film, we see glimpses of a family who prides themselves on being the “first” to the scene. (The YouTube commenter energy is palpable.) The couple has two boys, who dress up in feather headdresses and “Indian” costumes; Wilder’s framing of them calls to mind the way Bong Joon-ho shoots the similarly commercialized bastardization of native dress in Parasite. The effect is the same—a scathing condemnation of the upper-class blindness to the exploitation, oppression, and genocide that got them where they are today: on land they stole from others and no longer understand how to connect with.
One of Tatum’s early monologues is a paean to city living, a sneering dismissal of rural life that manages to be violent, misogynistic, arrogant, and ugly all at once:
You know what’s wrong with New Mexico, Mr. Wendell? Too much outdoors. Give me those eight spindly trees in front of Rockefeller Center any day. That’s enough outdoors for me. No subways smelling sweet-sour. What do you use for noise around here? No beautiful roar from eight million ants—fighting, cursing, loving. No shows. No South Pacific. No chic little dames across a crowded bar. And worst of all, Herbie, no 80th floor to jump from when you feel like it…When I came here, I thought this was gonna be a 30-day stretch, maybe 60. Now it’s a year. It looks like a life sentence. Where is it? Where’s the loaf of bread with a file in it? Where’s that big story to get me outta here? One year, and what’s our hot news? A soapbox derby. A tornado—that double-crossed us and went to Texas. An old goof who said he was the real Jesse James—until they found out he was a chicken thief from Gallup by the name of, uh, Schimmelmacher. I’m stuck here, fans. Stuck for good. Unless of course, you, Miss Deverich, instead of writing household hints about how to remove chili stains from blue jeans, get yourself involved in a trunk murder. How about it, Miss Deverich? I could do wonders with your dismembered body.