RARA-AVIS: The Big Carnival & NM noir

Ckottos Nikolai (greenman@cyberport.com)
Wed, 26 May 1999 23:09:56 -0700 I don't know if any one else caught Billy Wilder's _The Big Carnival_
(AKA _Ace in the Hole_) on Showtime (!) this month, but I finally did
this morning. I've been wanting to see this one for years, and it was
all I hoped it would be. This one has an edge like an obsidian knife.
Very dark, very cynical, and very realistic. It also represents a very
effective use of New Mexico locales (I only know of one other classic
period noir set here: _Ride the Pink Horse_, another great one). It's
interesting to note that many films noirs in the last two decades have
used southwest settings

I don't think it's showing again anytime soon, but maybe it's available
on video.

Did anyone else see this, or would would anyone else like to comment on
New Mexico noir (anyone else out there from NM?).

A line for the group: "I've seen a lot of hard-boiled eggs, but
you--you're twenty-minute." Lorraine Minosa (Jan Sterling) to Chuck
Tatum (Kirk Douglas).

BTW, if you did see it, the Navajo gentleman who refuses to enter the
cave in the ruin does not say, as another character translates, that it
is a sacred mountain (it's definitely not one of the six sacred Navajo
mountains). He says it's evil. And Russell Means is just talking Navajo
gibberish in _Natural Born Killers_ that bears no relation to the
subtitles in the film
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