The old Hollywood system operated under one assumption: you were there to see Cary Grant or Bette Davis or whoever the lead actor was. They gave the most popular actors the best projects. It doesn't really work that way anymore, because people don't really see movies for the actors. Not to say it never happens, but it doesn't drive public interest. Movie stars don't really exist in the way movie stars use to exist.
I say all that because for the first time, I understand that phenomenon. Oh sure, I may think I'm more likely to like a movie because somebody's in it, but they aren't really the driving factor. I'm more of a "is the movie good? Okay, I'll see it." guy. But Ball of Fire crystallized something: I want to watch anything Barbara Stanwyck is in.
I am not kidding you. This is one of the absolute greatest things about how the old Hollywood system worked. Stanwyck was a star forever and she always got the best projects so there are a ton of movies that I'm naturally going to watch with her in it anyway. But I want to watch every movie.
By pure coincidence, I ended up watching three Stanwyck movies in the span of about a month. I watched Baby Face, Remember the Night, and Ball of Fire. She is fan-fucking-tastic in every one of those movies. I loved the latter two movies in fact. (Baby Face is solid, but more notable for what it got away with pre-Hollywood code)
Opposite her in Ball of Fire is Gary Cooper. I haven't been much of a fan of Cooper in the movies I've seen so far, but he's well deployed here. Whatever hadn't clicked for me before clicks in this movie. He plays a good and believable straight-laced character. Shockingly, I also didn't find it hard to believe Cooper was some nerdy bookworm either.
Here's the premise. A collection of experts in their field all live together in the service of writing a new and up to date encyclopedia. All of them are men and all of them are bachelors, purposefully away from any distractions such as women. With the exception of Cooper, they are old men.
The old men are played by veteran character actors of the day. Look at each of their IMDB pages, and every one of them has well over 100 credits with careers dating back to silent film. That experience is certainly felt in the performances which are all good and refined despite not a whole lot of characterization for most of them.
Cooper is a grammarian of the group. But when he talks with a garbage man, he finds he doesn't understand the slang. Which means his part of the encyclopedia would be hopelessly out of date. So he goes out in the town and recruits people to help teach him new slang, one of the recruits being a nightclub performer on the run from the cops. That nightclub performer is Barbara Stanwyck.
So what you have here is a very classic screwball comedy setup. Stanwyck is supposed to be married to a gangster so she can't testify against him, but he's trying to stay hidden. So she needs to stay hidden until they meet. When Cooper comes along, she jumps at the chance to hide out at the place all the old men are living until she can meet the gangster.
Which proves not particularly difficult since all the old men are excited, understandably, about having Barbara freaking Stanwyck around. Cooper is very, VERY old school though and is the only one against it, but he's also the only younger guy so of course he falls in love with her and she with him.
But a lot of fun stuff happens in between all that. Ball of Fire is just delightfully fun to watch. I had a grin on my face for most of the movie. A screwball comedy done well is one of the most enjoyable film experiences you can have. It's just incredibly hard to do.
4/4 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment