Un grupo de profesores que trabaja en una nueva enciclopedia se encuentra con una cantante de club nocturno, buscada por la policía para ayudar a atrapar a su amante quien es el jefe de la m... Leer todoUn grupo de profesores que trabaja en una nueva enciclopedia se encuentra con una cantante de club nocturno, buscada por la policía para ayudar a atrapar a su amante quien es el jefe de la mafia.Un grupo de profesores que trabaja en una nueva enciclopedia se encuentra con una cantante de club nocturno, buscada por la policía para ayudar a atrapar a su amante quien es el jefe de la mafia.
- Dirección
- Guionistas
- Elenco
- Nominado a 4 premios Óscar
- 4 premios ganados y 4 nominaciones en total
- Waiter
- (as Elisha Cook)
Opiniones destacadas
A whole lot of talent went into the making of this film besides the two leads. Howard Hawks worked from a script by Billy Wilder and his writing partner, Charles Brackett. And Hawks put together a superb list of supporting players including seven of our finest character actors to be Cooper's professorial colleagues, Henry Travers, Leonid Kinskey, Aubrey Mather, Oscar Homolka, S.Z. Sakall, Tully Marshall and making his film debut, Richard Haydn.
These eight cloistered academicians are working off a grant to create some kind of ultimate encyclopedia. Cooper's specialty is the English language. A garbageman played by Allen Jenkins awakens him to a whole generation of new slang terms he hasn't heard. Cooper ventures out into the world and meets a variety of people and hears a whole batch of new expressions. His wanderings take him to a nightclub where he hears Stanwyck singing with Gene Krupa's band.
Stanwyck's just filled with all the new hep jive talk, but she's also ducking a grand jury subpoena to testify against her boy friend, gangster Dana Andrews. She decides a good place to hide might just be the house where all these professors are quartered.
It's quite a mismatch, scholarly and shy Cooper and brazen Stanwyck, In fact Hawks modeled Cooper's Bertram Potts on the character Cary Grant played in Bringing Up Baby which Hawks also directed. Cooper was as successful as Grant in breaking his stereotype though he never quite got the physical comedy down the way Cary did.
Still Ball of Fire is a great big ball of amusement. I'm surprised there hasn't been a remake of this recently. Danny Kaye did a remake called A Song Is Born later in the decade with Kaye being a music professor instead. But I can see the possibilities of a remake here with this group of academicians putting together a Wikipedia like encyclopedia or even an ultimate search engine for the internet like Google.
This is a very enjoyable film. It's got snappy, funny dialogue and while the premise requires suspension of belief it's not so far-fetched as to prevent enjoyment.
While there are film noir qualities it is more in line with the screwball comedies of the period. Big plus for featuring Gene Krupa and Roy Eldridge in the nightclub scene.
Highly recommended.
If, ultimately, it doesn't have the machine-gun energy of His Girl Friday (then again, few movies do), it makes up for it with a fun premise that Hawks and Wilder ride out logically, as far as comedy premises can go. It's about seven professors and their leader professor, played by Cooper, who for years have been writing an encyclopedia and are coming close to the end... except for a snag - slang words. The old guys and intellectuals haven't a clue as to what words like "Boogie" and "sugar-puss" mean, until they get a few people off the street to tell them. That, and a nightclub singer (Stanwyck) on the run from the cops after she gets unwittingly (and unfairly) mixed up in a murder plot with her fiancée. So, she shacks up with Cooper and his fellow profs, and it becomes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with the twist that the girl this time is a lot more wily (and tempting) while the men are... old professor types who know almost everything except the human heart.
But Hawks makes twist on his own premise as he goes along, too. We see the natural progression of the plot, of Cooper quickly falling in love with Stanwyck's advances (all fake at first just so she can stay at the house), and then little by little she falls for him too, or at least feels so guilty about what she's doing to see the old geezers as real people instead of obstacles. There are a few key scenes that break the mold of the comedic antics (some of which, like Stanwyck showing the old men how to dance is hilarious and memorable): one is the bachelor dinner between the professors, when the one professor, played by Richard Haydn, talks about his marriage from many years before, and it becomes genuinely tender and sincere, not played for laughs, certainly not when they're all singing the song Gienevive. The other scene is when Cooper walks into the wrong room (thinking it's a professor and not his future wife) and asks for advice about what to do, as he loves her and isn't sure about himself. It's all shot in dark, with a few specific lighting touches, and it's about perfect.
The ensemble is entertaining- from the old men with their various (sometimes interchangeable) personalities, to the film-noir knockoffs playing the henchmen of Joe Lilac- and there are many lines and moments that, upon a repeat viewing, should become even quotable. It could be said that it's slightly dated in some of its approach to tradition vs. the titillating, but it never loses its sense of humor, all the way up to the climax. Oh, and it also happens to feature one of the best nightclub music scenes in the movies, with Gene Krupa and his band doing "Drum Boogie", first in its usual form (a fantastic drum solo at the end), and then a variation on it with Krupa performing the song in a huddle of people with matchsticks on a matchbox. A small masterpiece of music in the middle of very good romantic comedy.
The film ahs a wonderful screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. (Sample dialog COP: How do you find a needle in a haystack? GANGSTER: Simple. Feed the hay to a horse, and X-Ray the horse.) Directed with zip by the great Howard Hawks.
¿Sabías que…?
- TriviaKathleen Howard was left with a fractured jaw when the punch that Barbara Stanwyck threw accidentally made contact. Stanwyck was reportedly mortified by the incident.
- ErroresA cop on the Washington bridge checkpoint says that a professor's driving license was issued in 1903. Driving licenses have existed in the USA only since 1910.
- Citas
Sugarpuss O'Shea: [needing help with a stubborn zipper] You know, I had this happen one night in the middle of my act. I couldn't get a thing off. Was I embarrassed!
- Créditos curiososOpening credits prologue: Once upon a time - in 1941 to be exact - there lived in a great, tall forest - called New York - eight men who were writing an encyclopedia.
They were so wise they knew everything: the depth of the oceans, and what makes a glowworm glow, and what tune Nero fiddles while Rome was burning.
But there was one thing about which they knew very little - as you will see . . .
- ConexionesEdited into Histoire(s) du cinéma: Une histoire seule (1989)
- Bandas sonorasSweet Genevieve
(1869) (uncredited)
Music by Henry Tucker
Lyrics by George Cooper
Performed a cappella by the professors
Selecciones populares
- How long is Ball of Fire?Con tecnología de Alexa
Detalles
- Tiempo de ejecución1 hora 51 minutos
- Color
- Relación de aspecto
- 1.37 : 1