Billy Wilder's bleak, biting and brilliant newspaper melodrama, forged out in his best and most incisive style, stars Kirk Douglas at his meanest as reporter Chuck Tatum, a man so far removed from humanity that he is willing to let a rock-fall victim die to prolong a scoop. In a film that's a clear precursor of his own 1974 The Front Page, Billy Wilder effortlessly matches Tatum's cynicism with lines like 'It's a better story if we get him out.' The public stayed away at the time, appalled no doubt by its unrelentingly dark view of the world, but it's now a revered cinema classic.

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