Great Balls of Fire

It’s been quite some time since I last posted a real oldie for this column, so I wanted to go back and check out a sweet and wacky comedy – and the ‘30s and ’40s gave us loads to choose from. Without further ado, Ball of fire is such a film, directed by Howard Hawks in 1941 and featuring Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper – this year it reaches its 85^th anniversary.

The premises is simple enough, just your average eight gifted professors who have been working on a dictionary for the last eight years of their life until a woman disrupts the equilibrium they have created for themselves. The character played by Barbara Stanwyck is a fast-talking dame, very intelligent, that for one reason or another chose a not ideal path in life; this is an archetype that the actress employed to great effect in other movies (consider The Lady Eve for instance – also from 1941). In Ball of Fire she is a showgirl that falls in love with a gangster and upon being wanted for questioning by the police, she hides at the house where the eight professors work, creating a hilarious situation. Gary Cooper, the linguist of the group, eventually falls in love with her and after some mix-ups and comedic tropes, the third act gets to its natural happy ending.

There is nothing exceptional to be said about the plot of the movie or about the scenes and how they are set; the script is solid but what really deserves praise in this context is the delivery. There is a hidden quality to the way Barbara Stanwyck converses and manipulates attention – not only of the eight professors, but also of the viewers. In Ball of Fire this is even more enhanced when a showgirl, a woman who by character design didn’t have an intellectual upbringing, manages so effortlessly to play around with words and mislead the cast of professors.

A minor P.S. should be dedicated to the professors themselves; their lovable way of interacting and conversing never fails to put a smile on one’s face.

I would give this movie a 6 out of 10 ‘anemone nemorosa’.