Wilder drew on his past experience as a reporter in Vienna to inform one of his darkest works. Kirk Douglas stars as a cynical journalist from New York City who takes a lesser job for a newspaper in Albuquerque. He stumbles upon a man trapped in a mine and proceeds to exploit this hard-luck, human interest story to get front-page headlines.  Wilder’s first work as a producer skewers the sensationalist drives of the media and reflects his desire to create work with greater moral complexity than was possible in the studio system.