Ball of Fire

 This movie kept me up until almost two in the morning. Typically of heyday Hollywood, the plot of this film follows a pretty steady pace. Billy Wilder proved his skill in keeping the conflict to a constant level throughout. It never dips into boring, and never into "bite your nails" intense.

The opening scenes are extremely and intentionally dated, but very funny. "Cuddles" Sakall stood out in a group of no-name older character actors, but they all filled their roles quite well. The script started giving me a headache after a while. Some of the slang in question has remained in our vocabulary, some is pretty obvious, and some, I suspect, was made up just to make things more interesting.

Barbara Stanwyck plays a character typical for her - the slightly shady and flamboyant woman of the world (which she pulls off stunningly) - and Gary Cooper plays a mealy-mouthed professor. It seemed a little odd, because I'm so used to seeing the professor types as quick, verbally, but the script (and his own acting, I presume) made him plodding, and a little naive, where Sugarpuss (obviously a stage name) came out with all the worldly-wise-cracks. Of the two, she seemed the most mentally acute, probably contributing to the stereotype which brands the formally educated as street-stupid, a pattern flattering to the proletariat who would have been paying to see the film at the time.

Anyway, loved it, and wish it were on more lists than the soppier "The Lady Eve" which borrows many of these same character dynamics but without the gangster intensity.