Love in the Afternoon is a 1957 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on the Claude Anet novel Ariane, jeune fille russe, which previously was filmed as Scampolo in 1928 and Scampolo, ein Kind der Strasse in 1932, the latter with a script co-written by Wilder.
Plot
Beautiful young French cello student Ariane Chavasse, the daughter of private detective Claude Chavasse, is reading his case files and becomes intrigued by American business magnate Frank Flannagan, a playboy frequently trailed by Claude at the request of jealous husbands whose wives Frank is wooing. When Ariane discovers one of the cuckolded men, identified only as Monsieur X, plans to shoot Frank, she decides to warn him without revealing her identity.
Frank is taken with the mysterious girl, who presents herself as a femme fatale, and she in turn begins to fall in love with the considerably older man. Complications ensue when Frank, determined to discover why Ariane will rendezvous with him only in the afternoon, hires her own father to investigate her. When he learns she is far more innocent than he realized, Frank decides to leave Paris without her. At the station, as Ariana runs along the platform beside his departing train, Frank is overcome with emotion and sweeps her up into his arms.
Production
Love in the Afternoon was the first of twelve screenplays by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, who met when Wilder contacted Diamond after reading an article he had written for the Screen Writers Guild monthly magazine. The two men immediately hit it off, and Wilder suggested they collaborate on a project based on a German language film he had co-written in the early 1930s. [1]
The poster used for the film's release in French-speaking markets
Wilder's first choice for Frank Flannagan was Cary Grant "It was a disappointment to me that he never said yes to any picture I offered him," Wilder later recalled. "He didn't explain why. He had very strong ideas about what parts he wanted." The director decided to cast Gary Cooper because they shared similar tastes and interests and Wilder knew the actor would be good company during location filming in Paris. "They talked about food and wine and clothes and art," according to co-star Audrey Hepburn, Wilder's only choice for Ariane. Talent agent Paul Kohner suggested Maurice Chevalier for the role of Claude Chavasse, and when asked if he was interested, the actor replied, "I would give the secret recipe for my grandmother's bouillabaisse to be in a Billy Wilder picture." [1]
Filming locations included Château de Vitry in Val-de-Marne, Palais Garnier, and the Hôtel Ritz Paris.
Music plays an important role in the film. Much of the prelude to the Richard Wagner opera Tristan und Isolde is heard during a lengthy sequence set in the opera house, and Gypsy style melodies underscore Frank's various seductions. Matty Malneck, Wilder's friend from their Paul Whiteman days in Vienna, wrote three songs for the film, including the title tune. Also heard are "C'est si bon," "L'ame Des Poètes" by Charles Trenet, and "Fascination," which is hummed repeatedly by Ariane. [1]
For the American release of the film, Maurice Chevalier recorded an end-of-film narration letting audiences know Ariane and Frank are married and living in New York City. Although Wilder objected to the addition, he was forced to include it to forestall complaints that the relationship between the two was immoral. [1]
The film was a commercial failure in the United States, prompting Allied Artists to sell the distribution rights for Europe, where it was a major success under the title Ariane. [1]
Cast
Critical reception
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called the film a "grandly sophisticated romance" "in the great Lubitsch tradition" and added, "Like most of Lubitsch's chefs-d'oeuvre, it is a gossamer sort of thing, so far as a literary story and a substantial moral are concerned . . . Mr. Wilder employs a distinctive style of subtle sophisticated slapstick to give the fizz to his brand of champagne . . . Both the performers are up to it — archly, cryptically, beautifully. They are even up to a sentimental ending that is full of the mellowness of afternoon." [2]
TV Guide noted the film has "the winsome charm of Hepburn, the elfin puckishness of Chevalier, a literate script by Wilder and Diamond, and an airy feeling that wafted the audience along," but felt it was let down by Gary Cooper, who "was pushing 56 at the time and looking too long in the tooth to be playing opposite the gamine Hepburn . . . With little competition from the wooden Cooper, the picture is stolen by Chevalier's bravura turn." [3]
Channel 4 thought "the film as a whole is rather let down by the implausible chemistry that is meant to develop between Cooper and Hepburn." [4]
References
External links
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