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Undescribable Perfection

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Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

BALL OF FIRE is one unassailable and enjoyable to watch comedy. Director Hawks surprised me with his moderation. Honestly I was expecting an explosion of "something", but I think that in this case made a real impact as well. Perhaps overly potentiation (sexual) attraction between opposite character (in this case professor and entertainer) and sudden marriage at first sight. Cute is a parody of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Older professors are dwarfs, the youngest of them is prince, singer or entertainer is a princess and evil witch is ruthless gangster.Gary Cooper as Professor Bertram Potts was re-coiled and very intelligent. Some kind of genius. Maybe socially inept, but very gentle and honest character. Range humor is what adorns Cooper through this genre. Barbara Stanwyck as Katherine "Sugarpuss" O'Shea She found herself in a similar role as The Lady Eve. Again, a strong female character who is tough and feminine at the same time. She again plays on sexuality. Just to mention a scene in which her foot after she pulled the sock, ended in Cooper's arms.Ball of Fire is light and entertaining comedy. Maybe it does not belong to classics, but is certainly enjoyable to watch.

They do not make romantic comedies in the Preston Sturges mold anymore. And they probably won't even with the best of intentions. 'Ball of Fire', made a year after Sturges' 'Christmas in July' is a better film, and in a way formulaic of other of the filmmaker's comedies during the years of world war II. Barbara Stanwyck is the nightclub singer Sugarpuss O'Shea. She is a ball of fire and when she sings 'Boogie Woogie' accompanied by a big band drummer and a great jazz musician, you know you've hit pay dirt. The immovable object is Gary Cooper with the improbable, stuffy name of Bertram Potts--at first--straight laced, ivory tower compiler of a dictionary with as colleagues straight out of Hollywood wonderful array of colorful characters. These lexicographers live in splendid isolation, in a Brownstone house off of New York's fashionable Fifth Avenue near Central Park. Its a character of aw shucks me! that he will reprise in other romantic comedies with Stanwyck and later Jean Arthur. Potts has put eight years or so collecting American slang which soon appears outdated when he meets a garbage man who speaks hip slang that he doesn't understand. And so he ventures out of his comfortable, endowed position to a world he never suspected. And he finds himself in a night club where O'Shea wiggling hips, shimming and showing a pair of legs knocks him for a loop. He invites her to come to a group of slang speakers he has assembled during his wanderings in working class New York. She demurs. As in all romantic comedies, it turns out she's the squeeze of a gangster Joe Lilac, played with quiet menace by Dana Andrews before he broke through in 'Laura' or 'The Best Years of Our Lives'. As his right arm is the young Dan Duryea, who is less a villain than comic relief. Standwyck is wanted by the police because of pyjamas she gave to Lilac, and like a summer storm she shows up in a den of lonely bachelors who play their tasks in the dry lore of churning out a dictionary on sex, slang, climate, geography, plants and flowers and the like. Her presence brings out the playful inner child locked inside each and everyone of them. And so at a good tempo the comedy hums along...Look for 'Ball of Fire' on YouTube, it won't disappoint. SZ Skall is subdued in slapping his cheeks, Oscar Homulka and Leonid Kinsky and Henry Travis come through fine, and Richard Hayden, a widower, speaks in a pinched nosed voice which he would bring to his role as the nosy neighbor in 'Mr. Belvedere' a few years later. You have to hand it to the Studio System that honed the talents, major and minor, of the actors in 'Ball of Fire'. As for Stawyck, she already had an Academy Award, but she never shied away for any role that came her way. You've to see her in the film version of Gypsy Rose Lee's murder mystery, 'The G String Murder', for snappy dialogue and fast pace timing that she admirably shows in 'Ball of Fire'.

I'm not a fan of the romantic comedy genre, but Ball of Fire (1941) is so well-made and funny that I cannot help but fall under its spell every time it comes on TV. A 1940s riff on Snow White, it's a high point in screwball comedy, perfectly pairing Gary Cooper as a virginal professor out to learn about slang and Barbara Stanwyck as a vivacious gangster's moll who falls for his awkward charm in spite of herself. They're accompanied by a treasure trove of character actors, including some of my favorites Henry Travers, S.Z. Sakall, and Tully Marshall.While it features nothing beyond kissing, this film is sexier than any modern picture I can name. A cute movie.

A group of eight professors is writing an encyclopedia. The naive professor of English Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) concludes that he needs field research to update the slang in his article and he goes to the streets and to a night-club. He meets the sexy singer Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck), who is the mistress of the mobster Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews), and invites her to participate of the meetings of his research in the foundation that is promoting the encyclopedia. When she learns that the police have arrested Joe Lilac and are chasing her to testify against him, she decides to meet Prof. Potts and stay in the foundation. She becomes the pride and joy of the seven old man and Prof. Potts falls for her and proposes to marry her. Meanwhile Joe Lilac decides to get married to Sugarplus to avoid her testimony in the court. "Ball of Fire" is a silly and funny romantic comedy with Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper hilarious and showing a great chemistry. I believe that for natives in English this comedy is funnier since the dated "modern" slang might be understood and not translated. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Bola de Fogo" ("Ball of Fire")