BALL OF FIRE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". Curated by the inimitable Senior Programmer James Quandt.

Prince Charming, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs:
Howard Hawks/Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett-Style

Ball of Fire (1941)
Dir. Howard Hawks
Scr. Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Oscar Homolka, Henry Travers, S.Z. Sakall, Tully Marshall, Leonid Kinskey, Richard Haydn, Aubrey Mather, Dana Andrews, Ralph Peters, Dan Duryea, Kathleen Howard, Allen Jenkins, Gene Krupa

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Yes, I love him. I love those hick shirts he wears with the boiled cuffs and the way he always has his vest buttoned wrong. Looks like a giraffe, and I love him. I love him because he's the kind of a guy that gets drunk on a glass of buttermilk, and I love the way he blushes right up over his ears. Love him because he doesn't know how to kiss, the jerk! " - Sugarpuss O'Shea

In this day and age, how hard would it be for movies to include characters with colourful monickers like Sugarpuss O'Shea? (Accent on "like" since there can only be one Sugarpuss O'Shea as portrayed by Barbara Stanwyck.) Seriously, it's not as if anyone in real-life during 1941, when the great screwball comedy Ball of Fire was made, actually sported sobriquets (officially christened or not) like Sugarpuss O'Shea, anyway. So, hell, 2015 is as good a year as any for screenwriters and directors to embrace similarly delectable appellations in their motion pictures.

And dialogue? What's with movies today? Come on, get with the programme, dudes! (AND dudettes!) Really! Does anything in the 21st Century come close to the magnificent banter as wrought by those esteemed Ball of Fire scribes Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett? Check out this gloriously sexy, funny and eminently romantic repartee twixt Sugarpuss (Stanwyck) and Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper):

Sugarpuss: You think we could sort of begin the beguine right now?

Potts: Well, it's nearly one o'clock, Miss O'Shea.

Sugarpuss: Oh, foo, professor. Let's get ourselves a couple drinks, light the fire maybe, and you can start working on me right away.

Potts: I wouldn't think of imposing on you at this hour.

Sugarpuss: I figured on working all night.

Yes, it's always important for a gentleman to start working on Barbara Stanwyck tout suite! Imposing, indeed, if you ask this fella'.

Like any first rate romantic comedy, we've got a seemingly mismatched couple whom we desperately desire to get un-mismatched by getting together for an eternity of blissful whoopee by coming to appreciate and love each other's differences and in so doing, discover a few things or two about their own charming selves.

We begin with the introduction of a most unlikely Prince Charming in the form of Bertram Potts who, along with seven bookish codgers (Henry Travers, Oscar Homolka, Tully Marshall, S.Z. Sakall, Leonid Kinskey, Aubrey Mather and Richard Haydn), live and work in a stuffy old domicile branded the Totten Foundation by their late benefactor who has charged the men with writing a brand new encyclopedia bearing his surname and, of course, a decent entry within the A-Zs of all human knowledge.

Though our gents are well behind schedule and over budget (they're still working on the letter "S"), Potts is especially obsessed with his dictionary of contemporary American slang. After a conversation with the local garbageman (Allen Jenkins), our tightly-collared leading man discovers he's only begun to scratch the surface of the vulgar verbal vernacular of the modern American. He drags his coterie of stuffy old gents to a nightclub, hoping to connect with the beat of the country's au courant argot.

And WHAT a beat they connect with.

Legendary drummer Gene Krupa and his Orchestra are playing to a packed house and it's here where Potts encounters the woman of his dreams (only he doesn't quite know it yet). Krupa and his boys are blasting through a blistering rendition of "Drum Boogie" which gets even hotter with a closeup of a gorgeous hand clasping a curtain, its slender, titillatingly provocative finger tapping in rhythm to the beat until the hand clutches the fabric, wrenches it open and the sensual digit's owner, none other than hot chanteuse Sugarpuss O'Shea parades onto the floor and sexily croons along to the mirthful stylings of the orchestra.

Now, allow me please, an interjection not unlike the queries I opened my review with. Why, Oh Why, do we never see nightclubs in contemporary movies like the one on display here? Probably, because nightclubs like this don't exist anymore. Well, GOD DAMN IT, they should!

Before reading on, check out this clip from Ball of Fire and tell me afterwards you're not salivating at the prospect of such a nightclub appearing in a modern movie and on every bloody street corner on the North American continent.

Gene Krupa Orchestra -Drum Boogie-1941 by redhotjazz

And now try telling me that wunderkind director Damien Chazelle shouldn't have included repeat helpings of this clip in his otherwise perfect motion picture Whiplash.

But, I digress. Here's where Ball of Fire kicks into full gear. Sugarpuss is hooked up with mob boss Joe Lilac (a slimy Dana Andrews) and the District Attorney wants to subpoena her to testify against him. It's perfect! She needs a hideout and Potts needs an ideal guide to the lexicon of the savages. Lilac's henchmen Duke Pastrami (an even slimier Dan Duryea) and Asthma Anderson (the bumblingly slimy Ralph Peters) dispatch her into the lair of Prince Charming and the Seven Dwarfs of the esteemed Totten Foundation.

Here's where they fall in love (though they don't know it yet). Here's where the seeds of betrayal are sown. Here's where Ball of Fire delivers laughs and romance aplenty until its stirring climactic chicanery involving guns-a-blazing, mad-dashes and lovers destined to be together being ripped apart and brought back into each other's arms for some very hot Yum-Yum-Yum.

And if you want to know what a yum-yum-yum is, you're going to have to see the movie. I'm not spoiling that one for you.

The Film Corner Rating: ***** 5-Stars

Ball of Fire plays Thursday, February 12 at 9 p.m. at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX in James Quandt's amazing series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". The film is presented in a GLORIOUS 35MM ARCHIVAL PRINT. For further info, visit the TIFF website HERE. As well, there are many Barbara Stanwyck films from this TIFF series which can be ordered directly from the following links: Buy Barbara Stanwyck movies in Canada HERE and/or Buy Barbara Stanwyck movies in the USA or from anywhere in the world HERE. You can even click on any of these links and order ANY movie you want so long as you keep clicking through to whatever you want to order. By doing so, you'll be contributing to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

RED RIVER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Classic Western by Howard Hawks gets the Criterion Collection Touch. Get ready for Mutiny on the Bounty - Cattle Drive Style

In a world of men,
The Duke and Monty
are ultimate bedfellows.

Red River (1948) *****
Dir. Howard Hawks
Starring: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift,
Walter Brennan, John Ireland, Harry Carey Sr, Harry Carey Jr,
Chief Yowlachie, Noah Beery Jr, Hank Worden, Joanne Dru, Coleen Gray

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I didn’t know the big son of a bitch could act."
- John Ford upon seeing John Wayne in Red River

Everyone and their goldurn' egg-suckin' hound brings up Ford's exclamatory ejaculate upon Wayne's towering performance as the mean-ass cattle baron Tom Dunson in the immortal western by Howard Hawks, but how can one not? Wayne's had the ludicrous bad rap of being a dreadful actor since he first appeared on-screen in Raoul Walsh's 1930 western epic The Big Trail. For decades afterwards, far too many boneheaded pseuds have made this erroneous assumption. Walsh's film was a huge box-office flop. This was due mainly to the astronomical price-tag of being shot in duplicate, once in 35mm, again in an early 65mm wide-screen process and then twice more in French-and-German-language versions. Yes, Wayne's a tad unsteady in it, but then so are all the actors. This was 1930 and The Big Trail was one of the first major sound pictures and a monumental undertaking at that. Poor Wayne suffered in the subsequent ignoble purgatory of Grade-Z westerns until John Ford cast him in Stagecoach.

Though that was a hit, Wayne continued to toil in one picture after another that misused his talent. There were exceptions, of course, like Ford's They Were Expendable and The Long Voyage Home (great movies, but flops nonetheless), Walsh's wonderful Dark Command, William Seiter's rousing Allegheny Uprising, Edwin Marin's thoroughly enjoyable Tall in the Saddle and a clutch of solid war efforts like Edward Dmytryk's Back to Bataan and David Miller's Flying Tigers, plus, lest we forget, Cecil B. DeMille's utterly berserk action-adventure melodrama Reap The Wild Wind, but none of these were big enough to entrench Wayne as a bonafide star.

It wasn't until 1946 that Hawks cast Wayne in Red River and began shooting his stunning film adaptation of "Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail", the Borden Chase magazine serial (turned novel), that John Wayne would eventually become a genuine star. It was also at this early juncture when John Ford saw a cut of the film to render feedback at Hawks's request as the filmmaker encountered considerable production and editing snafus. When Red River was finally released in 1948, it was the same year that Wayne also starred in two great John Ford classics Three Godfathers and Fort Apache. With Red River and the two Ford films, Wayne finally shot to the all-important list of guaranteed box-office success as determined by the association of theatre owners in America. Wayne remained on the top ten for 25 years!!!

Red River has oft been described as a cattle-drive version of Mutiny on the Bounty which, at its most basic level it most certainly is. The first chunk of Hawks's picture has a much younger Tom Dunson (Wayne), leaving a wagon train behind, as well as the woman he loves (Coleen Gray) and setting his sights, not westward, but south to Texas. With his old pal Groot (Walter Brennan), Dunson stakes a huge parcel of prime Texas cattle country all for himself. After killing a Mexican emissary who informs him that the land belongs to a wealthy landowner living hundreds of miles away in "Old Mex", Dunson and Groot see clouds of smoke from where they left the wagon train behind.

Matt Garth (later to be played as an adult by Montgomery Clift) is a young boy, delirious with shock, who wanders onto Dunson's land with one lone cow and a tale of the entire wagon train having been decimated by Redskins. When a few of the varmints attempt to make similar mincemeat out of Dunson, Groot and Matt, they end up tussling with the wrong son of a bitch and they're handily dispatched to the Happy Hunting Grounds in the Sky. Upon discovering the keepsake he bestowed upon his lady love adorning the wrist of an Indian he's killed, Dunson's eyes fill with the blankness of a shark. Nothing is going to stop him.

With only the single-minded desire to raise as many cattle as humanly possible, Dunson transforms into a man possessed with pure, almost psychopathic ambition - so pure, so mad, that when the tale leaps ahead twenty years, the number of graves filled with those who would dare threaten the man's resolve dot the now-huge and bustling Dunson cattle ranch with the same frequency as tumbleweeds blasting across the rich Texas grassland. Our tale proper begins then, in Post-Civil-War Texas where thousands upon thousands of heads of Dunson's cattle are ready to go to market. But what market? The South has been ravaged by unscrupulous carpetbaggers and Dunson's herd needs to be driven thousands of miles away to garner the fair price they're worth.

Matt has grown into a strapping lad. The recipient of Dunson's tutelage in the manly arts of fighting and killing and home from fighting with the Rebel Army, Matt has, for all intents and purposes, been raised as Dunson's son and he's a chip off the old block in most ways, except one. When the drive begins, Dunson leads his cowboys with the force and fury of a Captain Bligh. If anything, Matt is the voice of reason. As Dunson becomes increasingly unhinged, ordering whippings and killings of those who would dare make a single mistake, or worse, attempt to abandon the cattle drive, the step-son eventually needs to take control of the herd and the drive.

Dunson, left with no weapons and enough rations to keep him until Matt takes the cattle to market, becomes even more insane and promises that he will eventually hunt Matt down and kill him in cold blood.

There's so much to admire in this tale of the Old West. The action is furious, the suspense often unbearable and the drive itself a thing of utter, sweeping beauty. A stampede sequence is so overwhelming, you need to pinch yourself a few times to prove that the magnitude and force of what you're experiencing is unlike anything you've ever, or will ever see. The drive itself is also a thing of beauty. It's one of the few times in the entire history of cinema where the drudgery and tedious nature of the actions on screen are so naturally life-like that they're anything but tedious.

While there isn't a single performance in the film that's less than perfect, John Wayne towers above everyone and everything. Yes, there's no doubt Wayne's now fully in command as one of the greatest stars in movie history, but his performance runs rings round everyone, including the great Montgomery Clift who was certainly no slouch in the thespian department. And for all the spectacle of this monumental undertaking, Hawks infuses the film with sheer immortality by placing so much emphasis upon the great cast of characters, but always finding ways to exploit Wayne's sheer physically powerful and expert abilities in terms of how he moves and carries himself on-screen.

Wayne barrels through this film like a Sherman Tank and Hawks's instincts with respect to casting this genuine giant were right on the nail. Borden Chase's novel describes Dunson thusly:

"A bull of a man. A brute of a man. Thick-necked, low-jowled, with eyes that looked out at you like the rounded grey ends of bullets in a pistol cylinder."

This is John Wayne. This is Red River. This is a world of men as raw and rough as can be. In spite of all the seemingly insurmountable difficulties Hawks faced at every level to get the film made, he like Tom Dunson, like John Wayne, triumphed beyond all expectations.

And for those so inclined, the movie features the most delightfully homoerotic exchange between two stars ever committed to celluloid. It's a western, of course, so it involves guns. It never gets more phallic than glistening rods - in both life and the movies.

Red River not only represents a triumph of Howard Hawks, John Wayne and American Cinema, but is a film that displays the overwhelming care and artistry of the Criterion Collection in ways that somehow exceed the company's already Herculean efforts and unimpeachable reputation as one of the greatest and most visionary home entertainment distributors. The huge Dual Format 4-disc BLU-RAY/DVD box set includes a 2K digital restoration of the rare original theatrical release version, Hawks's preferred cut and a 2K digital restoration of the substantially longer, prerelease version, which has considerable archival value as its ending comes closer to Hawks's original vision, but was unscrupulously butchered by the boneheaded Howard Hughes (who threatened legal action as he felt it was a carbon copy of the ending in The Outlaw). The package includes two genuinely GREAT interviews with Peter Bogdanovich and Molly Haskell, audio excerpts from a 1972 conversation between Hawks and Bogdanovich, plus a 1970 interview with novelist and screenwriter Borden Chase. Completists will delight to the inclusion of the Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1949 as well as an attractive booklet that includes a superb interview with Red River's editor Christian Nyby. There is the less necessary requisite inclusion of the film's trailer, a video interview and printed essay both of the egghead variety by film scholars, but these features will prove welcome to most. What I LOVED, however, given my collector-mentality, is the gorgeously designed box with a lovely cover by Eric Skillman AND - YEEHAAAAAAAA - a terrific new paperback edition of Chase’s original novel which was previously out of print. This is one damn fine book. I read it cover to cover in one sitting and delighted in Chase's first-rate oater-prose as well as all the very appropriate elements that inspired Hawks as well as those that did not (though frankly, add extra richness to the overall experience of enjoying the movie). The Criterion Collection Dual Format edition of Red River is easily one of my favourite home video packages of all time. It's given me a wealth of pleasure and information and will continue to do so for as many years as I'm on this Earth to benefit from it.

RIO LOBO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ho-Hum Howard Hawks is better than no Howard Hawks at all as this amiable, watchable John Wayne western vehicle proves.

Rio Lobo (1970) **1/2
dir. Howard Hawks
Starring John Wayne, Jorge Rivero, Christopher Mitchum, Jennifer O’Neill, Sherry Lansing and Jack Elam

Review By Greg Klymkiw

While I have fond memories of Rio Lobo from when I first saw it on the big screen as a kid with Dad, I should have guessed something was wrong when my memories were little more than assuming I’d enjoyed the picture. No other details were seared into my brain save for the opening train robbery sequence. After seeing this movie 41 years later on Blu-ray release, I can definitely vouch for the train robbery – it’s a genuinely kick-ass set piece.

Having the distinction of being the last movie directed by the great Howard Hawks, this might perhaps be the only reason not to completely dismiss it. That said, Rio Lobo is a reasonably pleasant 114-minute duster. In spite of the familiar territory of the plot, the screenplay, co-written by Leigh Brackett, is a loose re-telling of Hawks’s classic Rio Bravo and the entertaining but not-so-classic El Dorado (both of which were also written by Brackett). And gosh-darn-it, the picture is not without merit.

Beginning during the civil war, the story involves a Union Colonel (played by John Wayne) whose pay train is robbed by a couple of Confederates (played by Jorge Rivero and Christopher Mitchum). Wayne realizes they’re the two responsible for the hard, dirty work, but the robbery itself has been ordered by someone inside the Union army. When the war is over, Wayne becomes pals with Mitchum and Rivero (he views their pre-war actions as just that – an “act of war”) and the three of them team up to track down the Union traitor (whose actions Wayne views as an “act of treason”). This all converges when the trio helps out the settlers in and around the nearby Rio Lobo, who are beleaguered and bullied by a corrupt land baron. (I’ll let you guess whom the Union Army traitor turns out to be.) At one point, like the aforementioned Hawks westerns, a motley assortment of good guys hole up in a jail whilst the bad guys lay siege.

So in terms of plot, it’s mostly a case of been there done that, but there are worse crimes a western can commit. It’s all in the delivery.

On the plus side, the action set pieces are extremely thrilling. Hawks was wise to hire ace action and stunt genius Yakima Canutt (the man solely responsible for the legendary chariot race in Wyler’s Ben-Hur, among other great cinematic rollercoaster rides), and his second unit direction includes some truly masterful carnage and derring-do.

Another good move on Hawks’s part was re-enlisting screenwriter Brackett to his cause. Not only is the plotting reasonably solid, the movie is peppered with some really crisp dialogue. The problem is that so many of the actors in the film are completely at a loss as to how to deliver their lines.

John Wayne seems up to the challenge, but having to play opposite the sad likes of Jennifer O’Neill (her line-thudding monotone is especially egregious) and the handsome but stilted Jorge Rivero appears to visibly drive the Duke to distraction onscreen. On the other hand, Wayne is such a great actor and true star that one is still glued to him throughout and happy enough to amble along the familiar trail his character is on. Our first introduction to Wayne is especially terrific and sets the tone of his character perfectly. When a young officer approaches Wayne and apologizes for disturbing him, Wayne responds in his deadpan drawl, “You were told to disturb me. You’d have been a lot sorrier if you hadn’t.” Gotta love the Duke!

One also assumes Brackett had a hand in the many funny jokes involving Wayne’s paunchy physique. As the story goes, when Hawks was running into trouble with William Faulkner on the screenplay for The Big Sleep he demanded the immediate assistance of “that guy Brackett” to punch things up. Having written primarily science fiction to that point, Brackett also wrote an amazing hard-boiled detective novel, “No Good for a Corpse,” and the writing endeared itself to Hawks as just what he needed. Throughout many pictures, including those of Hawks, “that guy Brackett” handled HERSELF with the craft and aplomb of an old pro – that she most definitely was. My favourite John-Wayne-directed joke in Rio Lobo is when some strapping young men lift his dead weight after knocking him out cold and one of them quips, “He’s heavier than a baby whale”.

The banter delivered via the screenplay to O’Neill and Rivero is exceptionally well written, but neither actor can attack it with the ping-pong ferocity that was such a hallmark of Hawks’s great comedies and most certainly not to the level displayed by Bogie and Bacall in Hawks’s first teaming with Brackett in The Big Sleep. As the film proceeds, one can almost feel the frustration Hawks must have been fraught with as scene after scene involving these two drags the movie down to some considerable depths.

Much better in the supporting cast is future producer and studio head Sherry Lansing who proves to be a gorgeous and terrific actress. If only she’d had O’Neill’s role. There’s also able support from Robert Mitchum’s son Christopher, who is a lightweight compared to Dad but attractive and affable enough. He’d have been great in Rivero’s role. Thankfully, there are some wonderful old hands like Jack Elam (chewing the scenery like only he could) and a nice bit from Hank (Ole Mose) Worden.

If you’re a fan of Hawks, westerns, good writing (albeit butchered by some awful actors) and The Duke, Rio Lobo will prove to be worth seeing. How memorable it will be is another question, but I can assure you that my second helping after four decades was not without merit.

"Rio Lobo" is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Video. It has no extra features, but the movie looks just fine in high-definition, and thankfully some over-zealous flunky in the transfer suite hasn’t seen fit to remove the grain and given the film some quality colour balance. Should you buy it? I would. But that’s me.