Some journalists will do anything for a story. Whilst the plot of Ace in the Hole is lent an unexpected topicality by press events in the UK, that is not the only reason it makes for such an excellent and prescient movie experience 60 years after its original release. The themes and motives of Billy Wilder’s characters, particularly Kirk Douglas’s excellently snarling and conniving Chuck Tatum, give this noir its timelessness.

Charles ‘Chuck’ Tatum is an unemployable former big-shot journalist, reduced to working at the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. One year into his stint and no closer to his yearned-for scoop, Tatum and his young photographer happen upon the plight of Leo Minosa – a man stuck in a cave after looking for ancient Native American artefacts.

Conspiring with Leo’s unhappy want-away wife, the local sheriff (seeking re-election) and engineer, Tatum uses and unnecessarily prolongs Leo’s plight to get his ticket back to the big time and the front pages. He engineers a media circus (spookily similar to the 2010 Chilean Miners’ rescue) around the formerly sleepy and remote outpost of Escadero, with him at the centre. The film takes a brutally cynical swipe at how the media reports events, and the motives of both them and the vultures and opportunists who can latch on.

An undeserved box office disappointment in 1951, Ace in the Hole deserves another look in an age where people take a more cynical view of the press and may share the acerbic views of Wilder’s eerily resonant film.