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A Foreign Affair

 
Movies:

A Foreign Affair

  • Director: Billy Wilder
  • AMG Rating: starstarstarstar
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Movie Type: Satire, Romantic Comedy
  • Themes: Fish Out of Water, Americans Abroad, Love Triangles
  • Main Cast: Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, John Lund, Millard Mitchell, Bill Murphy, Peter Von Zerneck
  • Release Year: 1948
  • Country: US
  • Run Time: 116 minutes

Plot

Writer/director Billy Wilder (in collaboration with producer/writer Charles Brackett) earned his first critical condemnation with A Foreign Affair. Reviewers accused Wilder (as they would so often in the future) of moral bankruptcy, challenging him to prove what could possibly be funny about the Nazi war guilt, the bombed-out city of Berlin, the postwar European black market or attempted suicide. All of these elements are in Foreign Affair, and all are very funny. John Lund is an American army captain carrying on a casual affair with Berlin songstress Marlene Dietrich, who accepts Lund's attentions so long as there are contraband cigarettes and nylons added to the bargain. Iowa congresswoman Jean Arthur is sent as part of an American fact-finding delegation to Berlin, and Lund is compelled to clean up his act--or at least pretend to. Despite her initial shock at the corruption all around her, straitlaced Arthur eventually falls for Lund, but Dietrich has been at this game a lot longer. For an interesting cinematic and sociological exercise, A Foreign Affair should be shown in tandem with Wilder's 1961 Cold War comedy One, Two, Three. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Review

A cutting-edge comedy in the post-World War II era, A Foreign Affair remains a very funny film, but much of its richness came from the historical context of its satire. At the heart of the film is the observant wit of writer/director Billy Wilder, a Jewish German émigré with a sardonic view of life in post-war Berlin. The interplay among Marlene Dietrich, Jean Arthur, and John Lund gives the film much of its comic texture; the dialogue is sharp and the story is knowing. Charles Lang's cinematography is first-rate, and Edith Head's costume designs give the film much of its glamour. While not as well-known as other Wilder films, A Foreign Affair was a clear example of Wilder's increasing willingness to push the limits of what Hollywood would allow. While a film like A Foreign Affair would be the crowning achievement for many directors, Wilder had still more great films ahead of him, with such classics as Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Some Like it Hot (1959). ~ Richard Gilliam, All Movie Guide

Cast

Stanley Prager - Mike; Gordon Jones - First M.P.; Freddie Steele - Second M.P.; Raymond Bond - Pennecott; Boyd Davis - Griffin; Robert Malcolm - Kramer; Charles Meredith - Yandell; Michael Raffetto - Salvatore; Damian O'Flynn - Lieutenant Colonel; George Carleton - Gen. Finney; William Neff - Lt. Lee Thompson; Harland Tucker - Gen. McAndrew; Bobby Watson - Adolf Hitler; Frank Fenton - Maj. Mathews

Credit

Hans Dreier - Art Director, Walter Tyler - Art Director, Edith Head - Costume Designer, Charles C. Coleman, Jr. - First Assistant Director, Billy Wilder - Director, Doane Harrison - Editor, Frederick Hollander - Composer (Music Score), Frederick Hollander - Musical Direction/Supervision, Wally Westmore - Makeup, Charles B. Lang - Cinematographer, Charles Brackett - Producer, Sam Comer - Set Designer, Ross Dowd - Set Designer, Gordon Jennings - Special Effects, Hugo Grenzbach - Sound/Sound Designer, Walter Oberst - Sound/Sound Designer, Charles Brackett - Screenwriter, Richard L. Breen - Screenwriter, Billy Wilder - Screenwriter, Robert Harari - Screenwriter, David Shaw - Short Story Author

Similar Movies

Ball of Fire; The Fortune Cookie; Ninotchka; One, Two, Three; The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming!; Silk Stockings; A Song Is Born; Comrade X; Romanoff and Juliet; No Time for Flowers
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For the Gasolin' rock music album, see A Foreign Affair.
A Foreign Affair

Original poster
Directed by Billy Wilder
Produced by Charles Brackett
Written by Billy Wilder
Charles Brackett
Richard L. Breen
Based on a story by David Shaw adapted by Robert Harari
Starring Jean Arthur
Marlene Dietrich
John Lund
Music by Friedrich Hollaender
Cinematography Charles Lang
Editing by Doane Harrison
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date(s) June 30, 1948
Running time 116 minutes
Country United States
Language English

A Foreign Affair is a 1948 American romantic comedy film directed by Billy Wilder. The screenplay by Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Richard L. Breen is based on a story by David Shaw adapted by Robert Harari.

Contents

Plot

In 1947, a United States congressional committee led by prim Phoebe Frost of Iowa arrives in post-World War II Berlin to visit the American troops stationed there. Phoebe hears rumors that cabaret torch singer Erika von Schlütow, suspected of being the former mistress of either Hermann Goering or Joseph Goebbels, is being protected by an unidentified American officer. She enlists Captain John Pringle to assist in her investigation, unaware he is Erika's current lover.

After seeing Erika with Adolf Hitler in a newsreel filmed during the war, Phoebe asks John to take her to army headquarters to retrieve the singer's official file. In order to distract her, John woos Phoebe, who initially resists his romantic advances but eventually succumbs to his charms.

Colonel Rufus J. Plummer advises John he is aware of his relationship with Erika and orders him to continue seeing her in the hope she will lead them to another of her ex-lovers, ex-Gestapo agent Hans Otto Birgel, who they believe is hiding in the American occupation zone. Meanwhile, Erika and Phoebe are arrested during a raid designed to catch Germans without proper identification papers at the Lorelei, the club where Erika performs, and at the police station Erika claims Phoebe is her cousin in order to secure her release.

Phoebe, grateful for Erika's intercession on her behalf, goes with her to her apartment, where Erika confesses John is her lover just before he arrives. Humiliated by his deception, Phoebe leaves. Colonel Plummer attempts to reconcile Phoebe and John, who is targeted by Birgel at the Lorelei but killed by American soldiers who shoot him first. Erika is arrested and sentenced to serve time in a labor camp, and Phoebe and John are reunited.

Production

While serving with the United States Army in Germany during World War II, Billy Wilder was promised government assistance if he made a film about Allied-occupied Germany, and he took advantage of the offer by developing A Foreign Affair with Charles Brackett and Richard L. Breen. Erich Pommer, who was responsible for the rebuilding of the German film industry, placed what was left of the facilities at Universum Film AG at Wilder's disposal. While researching the existing situation for his screenplay, he interviewed many of the American military personnel stationed in Berlin, as well as its residents, many of whom were having difficulty dealing with the destruction of their city. One of them was a woman he met while she was clearing rubble from the streets. "The woman was grateful the Allies had come to fix the gas," Wilder later recalled. "I thought it was so she could have a hot meal, but she said it was so she could commit suicide." [1]

Marlene Dietrich was Wilder's first choice to play Erika, and Friedrich Hollaender already had written three songs - "Black Market," "Illusions," and "The Ruins of Berlin" - for her to sing in the film, but the director suspected she would be opposed to portraying a woman who collaborated with the Nazis. En route home from Berlin, he stopped in Paris to visit her, ostensibly to hear her opinion about a screen test he had made with June Havoc. "She kept making criticisms and suggestions," Wilder later said, "and finally I said, like I had thought of it just that moment, 'Marlene, only you can play this part.' And she agreed with me." [1]

Wilder convinced Jean Arthur, who was attending college at the time, to come out of retirement to play Phoebe. Throughout filming, the actress felt the director was favoring Dietrich, and late one night she and her husband Frank Ross went to Wilder's home to confront him with her suspicions. "Marlene told you to burn my close-up," an extremely upset Arthur insisted. "She doesn't want me to look better than she does." Wilder, knowing such insecurities were common when two very different personalities were working together, tried to reassure her he was not playing favorites, although of all the actresses he directed, he admired Dietrich most of all. "The crews adored her," he remembered. She like to find somebody with a cold, so she could make chicken soup for him. She loved to cook." Years later, Arthur called Wilder to tell him she finally had seen the film and liked it.[1]

Location shooting, much of it in the Soviet occupation zone, began in August 1947, and filming continued at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood between December 1947 and February 1948. The film was edited within a week after principal photography was completed, and it premiered at the Paramount Theatre in New York City on June 30, 1948, shortly after Wilder's The Emperor Waltz opened at Radio City Music Hall.[1]

Cast

Critical reception

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called the film "a dandy entertainment which has some shrewd and realistic things to say" and added, "Congress may not like this picture . . . and even the Department of the Army may find it a shade embarrassing. For the Messrs. Brackett and Wilder, who are not the sort to call a spade a trowel . . . are here making light of regulations and the gravity of officialdom in a smoothly sophisticated and slyly sardonic way." He continued, "Under less clever presentation this sort of traffic with big stuff in the current events department might be offensive to reason and taste. But as handled by the Messrs. Brackett and Wilder . . . it has wit, worldliness and charm. It also has serious implications, via some actuality scenes in bombed Berlin, of the wretched and terrifying problem of repairing the ravages of war. Indeed, there are moments when the picture becomes down-right cynical in tone, but it is always artfully salvaged by a hasty nip-up of the yarn." [2]

In later years, Channel 4 called it "one of Wilder's great forgotten films . . . worthy of rapid rediscovery," [3] while Andrea Mullaney of Eye For Film thought it was "talky, intelligent, cynical" and "as relevant to the current American involvement in Iraq as if it had been made yesterday." [4]

Awards and nominations

Charles Lang was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Black-and-White Cinematography but lost to William H. Daniels for The Naked City. Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Richard L. Breen were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay but lost to John Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and the Writers Guild of America Award, which was won by Frank Partos and Millen Brand for The Snake Pit.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Chandler, Charlotte, Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster 2002. ISBN 0-743-21709-8, pp. 136-141
  2. ^ New York Times review
  3. ^ Channel 4 review
  4. ^ Eye For Film review
  5. ^ Writers Guild of America archives

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