Ball of Fire

When Barbara Stanwyck takes the stage--playing a nightclub singer named "Sugarpuss" who sings "The Drum Boogie"--there's nowhere else I'd rather be. In Ball of Fire, which was directed by Howard Hawks, she's as unabashedly seductive and funny as she was in The Lady Eve, although Ball of Fire isn't quite as brilliantly conceived. It is, however, a perfectly charming comedy, in which the beleaguered Sugarpuss takes it on the lam and takes up digs with a bunch of confirmed-bachelor-professors working on an encyclopedia. The youngest of the bunch, Professor Potts, is played by Gary Cooper, and he's currently doing an involved study of contemporary slang; he meets Stanwyck as a potential field study, never suspecting to fall in love with her. Cooper perfectly plays the charmingly awkward and bumbling brainiac type, just as Henry Fonda did in Lady Eve. Stanwyck has him eating out of her hand soon enough, charming the other seven old men too, for whom she is somehow both beloved niece and sympathetic seductress. "That is the kind of woman that makes whole civilizations topple," snarls the persnickety housekeeper Miss Bragg. But what a topple.

With Dana Andrews, Richard Haydn, Oskar Homolka, Henry Travers, S.Z. Sakall, Tully Marshall, Leonard Kinskey, Aubrey Mather, Dan Duryea, Ralph Peters, Kathleen Howard, Allen Jenkins, and Mary Field. 

The Maltese Falcon

If the actors in The Maltese Falcon (1941) talked any faster, they'd be unintelligible, and if they talked any slower, the film wouldn't be nearly as entertaining. This is the kind of thriller that thrives on quick wit and quick words, and proves how a cadre of rotten-to-the-core characters can be appealing and turn a movie into a true classic. Humphrey Bogart heads the cast as Sam Spade, the cynical private eye who's hired by Mary Astor to help her get hold of a jewel-encrusted statue, one whose existence is the stuff of legend. So many people have died trying to get it--or trying to keep it, for that matter--that it seems foolish to imagine that anyone else would want to come near it. But like a magnet, it attracts people of questionable character who can't help themselves but respond to its pull. Peter Lorre, as the fiendish Mr. Cairo, gives a really marvelous performance. His facial expressions stir up all kinds of feverish suggestions in our minds, and what actually takes place in his performance in the form of gestures and tone of voice is very subtly villainous. He's got a "foreign-ness" that typecast him as such, and yet he's so good at playing that kind of sophisticated but sleazy character. Sydney Greenstreet, as The Fat Man, is appropriately greedy in his quest for the falcon and appropriately conniving in his slick method of getting people to do his bidding for him.

Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. Written and directed by John Huston. With Lee Patrick, Elisha Cook, Gladys George, Barton MacLane, Ward Bond, and Jerome Cowan. 101 min. ★★★½

The Wolf Man

The Wolf Man (1941) is a straightforward horror fable, starring Lon Chaney, Jr. in the titular role. As a human, he plays Larry Talbot, returning home to Wales after nearly twenty years away so he can eventually take over the family estate, currently presided over by his subtly domineering father (Claude Rains). Larry meets a girl named Gwen (Evelyn Ankers) and while the two of them are out walking one night, he's bitten by a werewolf (played by Bela Lugosi) and then finds himself turning into one as well. The real charm here is the spooky atmosphere: there's more fog here than in John Carpenter's 1980 film called The Fog. And the sets have an old-movie charm to them: it's obviously unreal, but also very enchanting as a result. This isn't likely to scare many people nowadays, but it's an enjoyably compact horror classic, and of course it spawned a long list of sequels, remakes, and spin-offs. Directed by George Waggner. Written by Curt Siodmak. With Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Patric Knowles, and Maria Ouspenskaya. 69 mins. b & w

The Lady Eve

In The Lady Eve (1941), Henry Fonda plays an oblivious millionaire who studies snakes, and who's returning home from a year in South America, when he meets an attractive woman (played by Barbara Stanwyck) on a cruise ship. She's got designs on him, or more accurately, on his money. She's a cardsharp who works alongside two older men, one of whom pretends to be her wealthy oil tycoon father. But when she falls in love with him for real, complications arise.

Barbara Stanwyck gives one of her most engaging and enjoyable performances in this smart comedy, written and directed by Preston Sturges. The scenes are well-thought-out so that you enjoy waiting for the punchlines, and it's wonderful fun watching Stanwyck play Fonda like a fiddle. She's expert at saying fast lines effortlessly, as though she'd ruminated carefully over every word before speaking it, and Fonda is a delightfully befuddled fool, a man who's mostly unaware of her flirtations, making love to her only inadvertently.

Fonda's character is, of course, unbelievably gullible, but this is one of those contrivances that allows the plot to function as amusingly as it does, so it's difficult to harp when you're having such a good time watching it all unfold.

With Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette (a jovial blimp of a man who plays Fonda's rich father, the owner of a successful ale brewing company), William Demarest, Eric Blore, and Melville Cooper.