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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A magical retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, August 9, 2005
This retelling of the SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS was actually based on a script that Billy Wilder wrote before immigrating to the United States from Germany, but it was only after the success of the Disney version that a demand was created for it. The enormously versatile Howard Hawks (quite literally the most versatile director in film history, the only director to have mastered and/or created five or six genres) took the script and turned it into one of the last great pre-WW II comedies. The story is simple: a group of monkish scholars living together in New York City are writing an encyclopedia. One of them is writing about slang, but being unfamiliar with contemporary argot begins research his topic by talking to people outside his normal range of acquaintance. He runs into gangster moll Sugarpuss O'Shea, who takes advantage of the scholars to move in with them in order to escape the police, who want to talk to her to implicate her guy Joe Lilac. While hardly Snow White, she certainly managed to stir up their lives.
The film is made wonderful by a number of things: Wilder's clever script, Hawks typically deft direction, a solid performance by Gary Cooper, but most of all by a scintillating job by the overwhelmingly alluring Barbara Stanwyck and a stellar collection of veteran character actors playing the seven dwarves. All the latter are great, but special mention has to be made of Richard Haydn (who excells even beside the others, with his extraordinary overpronounciation of everyday words), Oskar Homolka, and S.Z. Sakall. There are few more delightful collections of character actors in any Hollywood comedy. I personally prefer Barbara Stanwyck to any other actress in Hollywood history. She possessed an emotional immediacy that no other actress could approximate, and while her skills were perhaps a tad below those of someone like Katherine Hepburn, the latter never managed to match her fire and passion. And she is so sexy! I grew up watching Stanwyck on THE BIG VALLEY, so when I first started seeing her great roles from the thirties, forties, and fifties, I was absolutely stunned at how sexy she could be. She was attractive, yes, but sexier than she was attractive. And she was never sexier than she was here, with the exception of her role the same year in THE LADY EVE.
Another reason to see this film is the appearance of Gene Krupa in the early nightclub sequence. Krupa had, of course, been with Benny Goodman throughout the thirties, so this was very early in his career as leader of his own band.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This one's a keeper...., March 5, 2000
By A Customer
Why haven't we heard more about this comedy classic? Gary Cooper is one of eight super-brains writing an encyclopedia. Barbara Stanwyck is a definitely non-intellectual entertainer looking for a place to hide. With her sassy freshness, she captures the hearts of all the professors, particularly Cooper; then he - and they - capture hers. But her boyfriend, a local gangster, has some other ideas. This movie is first-class in every way - writing (Billy Wilder), directing (Howard Hawks), and an elite cast of 1940s stars. Any movie sixty years old is going to seem dated - all films should be regarded as period pieces - but that can be part of the fun of watching, especially as "Professor Cooper" investigates the ins and outs of the "slanguage" of the times. A couple of musical numbers accent the story, including a drum solo on a matchbox.... really! "Ball of Fire" was remade some years later as "A Song is Born," which loses some of the sparkle of its predecessor but gains some enjoyable jazz music; the two movies should be treated only as cousins. If you really enjoy the classic comedies, you should find this one worth your time.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Stanwyck masterpiece, September 18, 2001
This review is from: Ball of Fire [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper are perfectly cast as Sugarpuss O'Shea and Professor Bertram Potts. Potts and seven other erudite, academically entrenched professors are creating a new encyclopedia. Their residence is the perfect hiding place for Sugarpuss, when her gangster boy friend (played by Dana Andrews) forces her to go on the lam in order to avoid a subpoena. Using subterfuge and feminine wiles, she easily convinces the professors to let her stay with them. Her pretence being that linguist Potts will benefit from her expertise with modern (1941) slang. After a lifetime of academic isolation, Potts is attracted by her worldly sophistication and insouciance. This attraction rapidly turns into love, and this feeling becomes mutual. "Ball of Fire" is an exceptional movie. Let's not spoil it by revealing too much. If you haven't seen "Ball of Fire", it's well worth seeing. It's so outstanding that one viewing is not enough.
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