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AFS Cinema’s Summer Free-for-All – a free series showing off the kind of exemplars of indie, classic, and world cinema that’s AFS’ bread & butter – continues with this screwball comedy from 1941. Gary Cooper plays a nerdy academic studying slang who hits the jackpot with Barbara Stanwyck’s Sugarpuss O’Shea, a salty nightclub singer with the gift of the gab. Ball of Fire marked the last time the wildly witty Billy Wilder wrote a script (here, with Charles Brackett) that he didn’t direct himself; that task fell to another Golden Age of Hollywood notable, Howard Hawks. Screens in 35mm. – Kimberley Jones
