Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 154: Sat June 3

Ball Of Fire (Hawks, 1941): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 5.55pm


This 35mm presentation is in the Razor Sharp: The Fabulous Women of Howard Hawks season at BFI Southbank. The movie also screens on June 20th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Marvellous performance from Barbara Stanwyck, all snap, crackle and pop as the brassy nightclub entertainer Sugarpuss O'Shea who seeks refuge with seven crusty old professors (plus Gary Cooper) to escape unwelcome attentions from a gangster, and whose vocabulary (not to mention charms) excite delighted wonderment in the professors since they have just reached 'Slang' in the encyclopaedia they are compiling. Rather surprisingly, Hawks slightly muffs the sequence in which the gangster and his aides get their comeuppance; otherwise his handling of the sparkling Brackett-Wilder script and its subversions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is pure joy.
Tom Milne

Here (and above) is the trailer.

No comments: