Ball of Fire (1941, Howard Hawks) (Patreon)

68/100

Third viewing, last seen 20 years ago. Old-school Sarrisite auteurists (who generally aren't keen on Wilder) no doubt relish delineating its key Hawksian elements, and I can play that game myself: While the screenplay surely introduced Sugarpuss via her nightclub act, it's hard to imagine Wilder stopping the movie cold for a hushed matchbox reprise of "Drum Boogie" that doesn't advance the narrative in any way. That's pure pleasure for its own sake, and now probably my favorite sequence. On the whole, though, I no longer consider Ball of Fire to be top-tier Hawks and/or Wilder, though it's still often a great deal of fun. As Professor Potts, the million-dollar trouper is less than super-duper, in my opinion—he's just too rigid to be credibly flustered, and generates so few sparks with Stanwyck that Sugarpuss instead comes across as kinda horny for all seven pseudo-dwarfs (arguably a better story, but alas not acceptable in 1941). It doesn't help that she constantly calls him Pottsy, which sounds like Hopsy, which reminds me of the superficially similar but far richer dynamic between Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve. Cooper only comes alive when he gets ultra-goofy toward the end, with the put-up-your-dukes showdown (love the windmill punches as he sails out of frame); it's probably no coincidence that his most eccentric roles—Mr. Deeds, Howard Roark—are my favorites, or that Love in the Afternoon, in which he plays a traditional romantic lead, ranks quite low for me in Wilder's oeuvre. Potts splits the difference, in theory, but Cooper fails to make him cerebral enough or ardent enough. His primary function is to be upstaged by character actors.

Fortunately, Hawks is terrific with ensembles. The movie plays beautifully if you ignore its efforts to establish Potts as Sugarpuss' mate, instead viewing the encyclopedia gang as a collective; everyone gets his moment to shine, and Richard Haydn, as the widowed Professor Oddley, inspires a surfeit of emotion ("Sweet Genevieve") that eclipses Potts' subsequent inadvertent declaration of love. Stanwyck lives up to the title's promise, cheekily tongue-clicking her way through any disapproval. There are choice bad-grammar jokes ("on account of because") and endless ludicrous slang ("hoytoytoy"—or is it "hoitoitoi?") and pitch-perfect Wilder-Brackett moments of doleful beauty, e.g. Potts wooing Sugarpuss with lines from Richard III, following which she quietly says to herself, "Unquote, I suppose." I might have preferred a more inventive method when the professors foil Dan Duryea and pal via their accumulated knowledge, but the coded banter makes up for it (though, again, I wish Cooper had put more comedic oomph into his time-killing monologue of meaningless jargon). Compared to almost every recent Hollywood comedy, this is a masterpiece. Compared to actual masterpieces like Bringing Up Baby or Some Like It Hot, however, it's strictly from Dixie.