The Essentials - A Foreign Affair
SYNOPSIS
Billy Wilder, collaborating with his longtime screenwriting partner Charles Brackett, pits good old-fashioned American Heartland values against the cynical opportunism and survival instincts of a war-torn city in this biting comedy...and doesn't necessarily come out on the side of mom and apple pie. Jean Arthur plays an upright Iowa Republican member of Congress who travels to Berlin to look into reports of corruption and "moral malaria" among the occupying American forces. She enlists an Army captain (John Lund) in her crusade and finds herself falling for him, unaware that he's the man romantically involved with a German cabaret singer (Marlene Dietrich) who can lead army investigators to a high-level Nazi war criminal who was once her lover.
Director: Billy Wilder
Producer: Charles Brackett
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Richard L. Breen, Robert Harari; story by David Shaw
Cinematography: Charles B. Lang
Editing: Doane Harrison
Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Walter Tyler
Original Music: Frederick Hollander
Cast: Jean Arthur (Phoebe Frost), Marlene Dietrich (Erika von Schluetow), John Lund (Captain John Pringle), Millard Mitchell (Colonel Rufus J. Plummer), Peter von Zerneck (Hans Otto Birgel), Frederick Hollander (Pianist)
Why A FOREIGN AFFAIR is Essential
Billy Wilder may well be the most critically reviled of any of the "great" directors, popular with the moviegoing public for decades but inspiring fierce debate among film scholars. Audiences made hits out of
The Apartment (1960) and
The Fortune Cookie (1966), crack up over and over again at the cross-gender humor of
Some Like It Hot (1959), and still cherish the Audrey Hepburn of
Sabrina (1954) and
Love in the Afternoon (1957). Actors like Jack Lemmon, William Holden, Gloria Swanson, and Barbara Stanwyck have had some of their finest moments in a Wilder film, and
Sunset Boulevard (1950) and
The Seven Year Itch (1955) provided American film history with some of its most indelible images and moments. But a high number of critics and film scholars see only someone "too cynical to believe even his own cynicism," a director "hardly likely to make a coherent film on the human condition," and "a heartless exploiter of public taste who manipulates situation in the name of satire." Strong stuff. And much of it may be traced back to
A Foreign Affair.
Starting out as a writer in Hollywood, the Austrian-born Wilder brought a touch of jaded eloquence from the Old World he fled when much of it moved toward fascism in the early 1930s. He found an unlikely but worthy creative partner in the urbane, more conservative former
New Yorker film critic Charles Brackett, and together they wrote a number of scripts for other directors, undeniable classics like
Midnight (1939),
Ninotchka (1939), and
Ball of Fire (1941), praised for their witty sophistication and sly humor. In the early 40s, the team began making their own films from their scriptsBrackett as producer, Wilder as directorand had much success with the multiple Oscar winner
The Lost Weekend (1945), following closely on the heels of Wilder's success (without Brackett) in
Double Indemnity (1944).
Then Wilder returned to his old stomping grounds, Berlin, on assignment from the U.S. government following World War II, and his experiences there, the clash of cultures and values he observed, and his mixed feelings of regret for the lost city of his youth and hatred for the society that had perverted it under the sway of the Nazi regime found their way into a new story idea. The bombed-out remains of a defeated Germany may not have been anyone's idea of comic territoryeven Brackett reportedly had serious problems with that notionbut Wilder saw it as fertile ground for a satire on innocent, paternalistic Americanism clashing with the unsentimental survival instincts of a ravaged civilization, wrapped in the fluff of a romantic triangle tinged with sexual innuendo. Many were not amused.
The picture drew mixed reviews; Bosley Crowther of the
New York Times called it "dandy entertainment" while James Agee found much of it to be "in rotten taste." It was denounced on the floor of the House of Representatives, whose members resented its skewering of their institution, and banned by the army from being shown in Germany to the troops, many of whom no doubt engaged in the blatant sexual fraternization and black market trading depicted in the movie. In the following decades and up to today, opinion has remained widely divergent, some seeing it as "brutal" to its American leading lady (Jean Arthur) and "clumsily forced" in its humor, others finding it to be one of the best black comedies ever produced in Hollywood, full of daring (for its time) humor and amazingly fresh and relevant to our own times. Surely a film that inspires that much controversy and debate has to be essential viewing, if only to see what all the fuss is about.
But if that's not reason enough to give this largely overlooked comedy a closer look, then the picture holds one other major fascinationMarlene Dietrich. One of the central problems with
A Foreign Affair is the sudden about-face of its leading man from bluff opportunist to mooning romantic as he falls for Congresswoman Phoebe Frost, whose own swift turn from uptight spinster to dewy prom girl is equally unconvincing. But there's no doubt that Dietrich as Erika, the cabaret singer with a shady past, has the power to enslave him or any other man she chooses. Even nearing 50 years old, Dietrich is as captivating and believably seductive as she was in her early films with Josef von Sternberg. The picture comes to life whenever she's on screen, whether she's crooning one of Friedrich Hollaender's bitterly ironic songs or simply brushing her teeth in her bombed-out shell of an apartment.
Dietrich spent much of the war years in the trenches, so to speak, tirelessly visiting the troops, speaking out against the destructive path taken by her native Germany, and she was justly honored for that work. But her on-screen popularity had slipped in a handful of films that made ill use of her particular talents and appeal.
A Foreign Affair brought Dietrich back in full force, ironically as a woman whose only political convictions seem to be her own best interest, even if that means cozying up to high Nazi officials. It is one of the most iconic roles of her career, embodying at once the treacherous Lola Lola of
The Blue Angel (1930), the feisty Frenchie of her previous "comeback" film
Destry Rides Again (1939), and the international cabaret sensation she was about to become. Even if viewers find this film to be the genesis of the "rotten taste" Wilder was accused of for most of the remainder of his career, it's essential for any fan or student of the Dietrich persona.
by Rob Nixon
The Essentials - A Foreign Affair
SYNOPSIS
Billy Wilder, collaborating with his longtime screenwriting partner Charles Brackett, pits good old-fashioned American Heartland values against the cynical opportunism and survival instincts of a war-torn city in this biting comedy...and doesn't necessarily come out on the side of mom and apple pie. Jean Arthur plays an upright Iowa Republican member of Congress who travels to Berlin to look into reports of corruption and "moral malaria" among the occupying American forces. She enlists an Army captain (John Lund) in her crusade and finds herself falling for him, unaware that he's the man romantically involved with a German cabaret singer (Marlene Dietrich) who can lead army investigators to a high-level Nazi war criminal who was once her lover.
Director: Billy Wilder
Producer: Charles Brackett
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Richard L. Breen, Robert Harari; story by David Shaw
Cinematography: Charles B. Lang
Editing: Doane Harrison
Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Walter Tyler
Original Music: Frederick Hollander
Cast: Jean Arthur (Phoebe Frost), Marlene Dietrich (Erika von Schluetow), John Lund (Captain John Pringle), Millard Mitchell (Colonel Rufus J. Plummer), Peter von Zerneck (Hans Otto Birgel), Frederick Hollander (Pianist)
Why A FOREIGN AFFAIR is Essential
Billy Wilder may well be the most critically reviled of any of the "great" directors, popular with the moviegoing public for decades but inspiring fierce debate among film scholars. Audiences made hits out of The Apartment (1960) and The Fortune Cookie (1966), crack up over and over again at the cross-gender humor of Some Like It Hot (1959), and still cherish the Audrey Hepburn of Sabrina (1954) and Love in the Afternoon (1957). Actors like Jack Lemmon, William Holden, Gloria Swanson, and Barbara Stanwyck have had some of their finest moments in a Wilder film, and Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Seven Year Itch (1955) provided American film history with some of its most indelible images and moments. But a high number of critics and film scholars see only someone "too cynical to believe even his own cynicism," a director "hardly likely to make a coherent film on the human condition," and "a heartless exploiter of public taste who manipulates situation in the name of satire." Strong stuff. And much of it may be traced back to A Foreign Affair.
Starting out as a writer in Hollywood, the Austrian-born Wilder brought a touch of jaded eloquence from the Old World he fled when much of it moved toward fascism in the early 1930s. He found an unlikely but worthy creative partner in the urbane, more conservative former New Yorker film critic Charles Brackett, and together they wrote a number of scripts for other directors, undeniable classics like Midnight (1939), Ninotchka (1939), and Ball of Fire (1941), praised for their witty sophistication and sly humor. In the early 40s, the team began making their own films from their scriptsBrackett as producer, Wilder as directorand had much success with the multiple Oscar winner The Lost Weekend (1945), following closely on the heels of Wilder's success (without Brackett) in Double Indemnity (1944).
Then Wilder returned to his old stomping grounds, Berlin, on assignment from the U.S. government following World War II, and his experiences there, the clash of cultures and values he observed, and his mixed feelings of regret for the lost city of his youth and hatred for the society that had perverted it under the sway of the Nazi regime found their way into a new story idea. The bombed-out remains of a defeated Germany may not have been anyone's idea of comic territoryeven Brackett reportedly had serious problems with that notionbut Wilder saw it as fertile ground for a satire on innocent, paternalistic Americanism clashing with the unsentimental survival instincts of a ravaged civilization, wrapped in the fluff of a romantic triangle tinged with sexual innuendo. Many were not amused.
The picture drew mixed reviews; Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called it "dandy entertainment" while James Agee found much of it to be "in rotten taste." It was denounced on the floor of the House of Representatives, whose members resented its skewering of their institution, and banned by the army from being shown in Germany to the troops, many of whom no doubt engaged in the blatant sexual fraternization and black market trading depicted in the movie. In the following decades and up to today, opinion has remained widely divergent, some seeing it as "brutal" to its American leading lady (Jean Arthur) and "clumsily forced" in its humor, others finding it to be one of the best black comedies ever produced in Hollywood, full of daring (for its time) humor and amazingly fresh and relevant to our own times. Surely a film that inspires that much controversy and debate has to be essential viewing, if only to see what all the fuss is about.
But if that's not reason enough to give this largely overlooked comedy a closer look, then the picture holds one other major fascinationMarlene Dietrich. One of the central problems with A Foreign Affair is the sudden about-face of its leading man from bluff opportunist to mooning romantic as he falls for Congresswoman Phoebe Frost, whose own swift turn from uptight spinster to dewy prom girl is equally unconvincing. But there's no doubt that Dietrich as Erika, the cabaret singer with a shady past, has the power to enslave him or any other man she chooses. Even nearing 50 years old, Dietrich is as captivating and believably seductive as she was in her early films with Josef von Sternberg. The picture comes to life whenever she's on screen, whether she's crooning one of Friedrich Hollaender's bitterly ironic songs or simply brushing her teeth in her bombed-out shell of an apartment.
Dietrich spent much of the war years in the trenches, so to speak, tirelessly visiting the troops, speaking out against the destructive path taken by her native Germany, and she was justly honored for that work. But her on-screen popularity had slipped in a handful of films that made ill use of her particular talents and appeal. A Foreign Affair brought Dietrich back in full force, ironically as a woman whose only political convictions seem to be her own best interest, even if that means cozying up to high Nazi officials. It is one of the most iconic roles of her career, embodying at once the treacherous Lola Lola of The Blue Angel (1930), the feisty Frenchie of her previous "comeback" film Destry Rides Again (1939), and the international cabaret sensation she was about to become. Even if viewers find this film to be the genesis of the "rotten taste" Wilder was accused of for most of the remainder of his career, it's essential for any fan or student of the Dietrich persona.
by Rob Nixon
Pop Culture 101 - A Foreign Affair
Dietrich's iconic resonance in the role of Erika von Schluetow in this picture was boosted by having her accompanied in the night club scenes by Friedrich Hollaender, aka Frederick Hollander, who did the same in her films
The Blue Angel (1930) and
Manpower (1941). As he had done for those two movies, he also wrote her songs in this film, recalling the many other musical numbers he also composed for her in
The Song of Songs (1933),
Desire (1936),
Angel (1937),
Destry Rides Again (1939), and
Seven Sinners (1940). The song he wrote for Dietrich in
Blue Angel, "Falling in Love Again," became her theme song, performed by her hundreds of times in her long concert and cabaret career.
A base drum in the night club scenes advertises The Syncopators, one of the most famous jazz bands in pre-Nazi Berlin and the back-up musicians for Hollaender and Dietrich in
The Blue Angel (1930).
According to Dietrich biographer Steven Bach, the songs used in this picture were originally written by Hollaender for the Tingeltangel Club, his failed attempt to create a Berlin-style cabaret in Hollywood.
Wilder had expected this to be the first American film shot on location in war-torn Berlin following armistice, but he was beaten to the punch by RKO's
Berlin Express (1948), a thriller directed by Jacques Tourneur.
Dietrich's role in this as the former mistress of a Nazi official, a conniver who will play any side to her best benefit, was in direct contrast to reality. She was, in fact, vocally and vehemently anti-Nazi, and used her fame during World War II to advance the Allied cause against her homeland, for which she was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the U.S. (the first woman to receive one) and inducted into France's Legion of Honor.
Like this picture, Ernst Lubitsch's comedy
To Be or Not to Be (1942) was denounced as callous and tasteless for finding humor in Nazism.
Shortly before the release of this film, Dietrich's daughter gave birth to her first child, J. Michael Riva (now an award-winning art director-production designer).
Life magazine found the milestone momentous enough to feature the star on its cover with the words "Grandmother Dietrich." This began her image as "the world's most glamorous grandmother," a moniker she at first embraced but eventually grew tired of.
Wilder returned to Berlin years later for another politically-tinged comedy about cultures clashing, this time the communist-controlled East and the capitalist West.
One., Two, Three (1961) also used a central romance as a take-off point for its satirical barbs.
by Rob Nixon
Pop Culture 101 - A Foreign Affair
Dietrich's iconic resonance in the role of Erika von Schluetow in this picture was boosted by having her accompanied in the night club scenes by Friedrich Hollaender, aka Frederick Hollander, who did the same in her films The Blue Angel (1930) and Manpower (1941). As he had done for those two movies, he also wrote her songs in this film, recalling the many other musical numbers he also composed for her in The Song of Songs (1933), Desire (1936), Angel (1937), Destry Rides Again (1939), and Seven Sinners (1940). The song he wrote for Dietrich in Blue Angel, "Falling in Love Again," became her theme song, performed by her hundreds of times in her long concert and cabaret career.
A base drum in the night club scenes advertises The Syncopators, one of the most famous jazz bands in pre-Nazi Berlin and the back-up musicians for Hollaender and Dietrich in The Blue Angel (1930).
According to Dietrich biographer Steven Bach, the songs used in this picture were originally written by Hollaender for the Tingeltangel Club, his failed attempt to create a Berlin-style cabaret in Hollywood.
Wilder had expected this to be the first American film shot on location in war-torn Berlin following armistice, but he was beaten to the punch by RKO's Berlin Express (1948), a thriller directed by Jacques Tourneur.
Dietrich's role in this as the former mistress of a Nazi official, a conniver who will play any side to her best benefit, was in direct contrast to reality. She was, in fact, vocally and vehemently anti-Nazi, and used her fame during World War II to advance the Allied cause against her homeland, for which she was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the U.S. (the first woman to receive one) and inducted into France's Legion of Honor.
Like this picture, Ernst Lubitsch's comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942) was denounced as callous and tasteless for finding humor in Nazism.
Shortly before the release of this film, Dietrich's daughter gave birth to her first child, J. Michael Riva (now an award-winning art director-production designer). Life magazine found the milestone momentous enough to feature the star on its cover with the words "Grandmother Dietrich." This began her image as "the world's most glamorous grandmother," a moniker she at first embraced but eventually grew tired of.
Wilder returned to Berlin years later for another politically-tinged comedy about cultures clashing, this time the communist-controlled East and the capitalist West. One., Two, Three (1961) also used a central romance as a take-off point for its satirical barbs.
by Rob Nixon
The Big Idea - A Foreign Affair
Even years after their deaths, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder remain one of the most famous writing teams in motion pictures. They wrote the scripts for a number of films made by such established directors as Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, and Mitchell Leisen before taking more control over their projectsWilder as director, Brackett as producerin the early 40s, working almost exclusively together throughout the decade. They split temporarily (Wilder referred to it as "the usual marital infidelity") when Wilder collaborated with Raymond Chandler on
Double Indemnity (1944) but re-teamed for the Oscar-winning
The Lost Weekend (1945). They went back to Wilder's European roots for
The Emperor Waltz (1948), a romantic musical comedy set in pre-World War I Austria. Then Wilder decided to turn his attention to the city where he got his filmmaking start and from which he fled after the Nazi takeover, Berlin, now a ravaged ruin following the defeat of Germany in World War II.
Wilder had been to Germany right after the war and seen conditions firsthand. His one war-related film assignment took him right into the thick of its most horrifying detailwhat Allied troops found when they liberated the Nazi death camps.
Death Mills (1945) was made specifically for release in occupied Germany and Austria to show the citizens of those countries what had taken place there under Nazi rule and was one of the few incidences of directly implicating the common people of Germany in complicity with the Holocaust.
Wilder also spent time in Berlin right after V-E Day as an officer with the U.S. Army assigned to approve or deny artistic performance licenses for German companies. Wilder saw firsthand what life was like in occupied Berlin, both for the people of the city and their Allied occupiers, and he began to formulate a story that would take a satirical look at the situation from both points of view.
Wilder's intention to make a "propaganda comedy" set in war-torn Berlin evolved, in the course of collaboration with Brackett, into a culture-clash romance between a struggling German woman and an American GI.
By 1947 the story had taken on an additional character, thanks to another script Paramount owned by Irwin and David Shaw. "Love in the Air" was a comedy about a GI lothario who gets the chance to see the girls he left behind in every port of the war by accompanying a female member of Congress on a fact-finding mission through Europe and the Pacific. By the end of the trip, he has fallen in love with and proposed to the congresswoman. Wilder and Brackett decided to incorporate her into the story and made the GI a Berlin-based officer assigned to guide her through Berlin but retained his relationship with the shady German lady, turning the story into a romantic triangle.
In the hands of the writing team, the congressional representative morphed into a strictly moral, uptight servant of the people, described in the script as a former notary public, "one of those who, prior to putting her seal on a document, had to see the signatory actually sign it, and inspect the signatory's birth certificate, and verify the seal of the notary certifying the birth certificate."
Another writer, Robert Harari, was brought in to help them polish the story, and at the end of May 1947, they submitted their first treatment, beginning with a description of Berlin that already displayed some of the tone of the final product: "The city looked like a great hunk of burned Gorgonzola cheese on which rats had been gnawing. The rats were gone and the ants had taken over, putting some neatness into the ruins, piling the crumbs of destruction into tiny piles."
In the coming months, with a production date looming, former journalist Richard L. Breen replaced Harari on the writing team, his first screenplay assignment. Brackett and Wilder were used to going into production without a completed script, which had the advantage of not only allowing dialogue and action to develop somewhat organically but also of keeping the screenplay from the scrutiny of studio executives and film censors. A finished script was not ready until November.
The title
A Foreign Affair made the studio nervous with its suggestions of both international politics and sex. Several other titles were proposed: "The Feeling Is Mutual," "Out of Bounds," "No Limit," "Irresistible," "The Honorable Phoebe Frost," "Two Loves Have I." Brackett and Wilder briefly considered one suggestion, "Operation Candybar," before returning to the original.
In spite of all their attempts to keep the script under wraps, eventually the Production Code Administration (PCA) had to weigh in on censorship matters. The PCA found plenty to be concerned about, right on the brink of production. The U.S. government, army, and members of Congress were not to be ridiculed, they said, and they objected to "an overemphasis on illicit sex" running throughout the script. Brackett and Wilder agreed to some revisions, mostly in minor language and innuendo, while managing to keep the basic plot, ideas, and tone intact.
According to Wilder biographer Maurice Zolotow, Brackett disliked the premise of the movie and the concentration on corruption and sin. He preferred the character of the prim Congresswoman played by Jean Arthur, Zolotow claims, and concentrated on writing her. It's not clear if this is entirely true, but it has long been acknowledged that Brackett was the more staid and conservative member of the team and that the two often clashed. But until they split up a couple years after this production, Wilder always described their creative partnership as one of the happiest marriages in Hollywood.
by Rob Nixon
The Big Idea - A Foreign Affair
Even years after their deaths, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder remain one of the most famous writing teams in motion pictures. They wrote the scripts for a number of films made by such established directors as Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, and Mitchell Leisen before taking more control over their projectsWilder as director, Brackett as producerin the early 40s, working almost exclusively together throughout the decade. They split temporarily (Wilder referred to it as "the usual marital infidelity") when Wilder collaborated with Raymond Chandler on Double Indemnity (1944) but re-teamed for the Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend (1945). They went back to Wilder's European roots for The Emperor Waltz (1948), a romantic musical comedy set in pre-World War I Austria. Then Wilder decided to turn his attention to the city where he got his filmmaking start and from which he fled after the Nazi takeover, Berlin, now a ravaged ruin following the defeat of Germany in World War II.
Wilder had been to Germany right after the war and seen conditions firsthand. His one war-related film assignment took him right into the thick of its most horrifying detailwhat Allied troops found when they liberated the Nazi death camps. Death Mills (1945) was made specifically for release in occupied Germany and Austria to show the citizens of those countries what had taken place there under Nazi rule and was one of the few incidences of directly implicating the common people of Germany in complicity with the Holocaust.
Wilder also spent time in Berlin right after V-E Day as an officer with the U.S. Army assigned to approve or deny artistic performance licenses for German companies. Wilder saw firsthand what life was like in occupied Berlin, both for the people of the city and their Allied occupiers, and he began to formulate a story that would take a satirical look at the situation from both points of view.
Wilder's intention to make a "propaganda comedy" set in war-torn Berlin evolved, in the course of collaboration with Brackett, into a culture-clash romance between a struggling German woman and an American GI.
By 1947 the story had taken on an additional character, thanks to another script Paramount owned by Irwin and David Shaw. "Love in the Air" was a comedy about a GI lothario who gets the chance to see the girls he left behind in every port of the war by accompanying a female member of Congress on a fact-finding mission through Europe and the Pacific. By the end of the trip, he has fallen in love with and proposed to the congresswoman. Wilder and Brackett decided to incorporate her into the story and made the GI a Berlin-based officer assigned to guide her through Berlin but retained his relationship with the shady German lady, turning the story into a romantic triangle.
In the hands of the writing team, the congressional representative morphed into a strictly moral, uptight servant of the people, described in the script as a former notary public, "one of those who, prior to putting her seal on a document, had to see the signatory actually sign it, and inspect the signatory's birth certificate, and verify the seal of the notary certifying the birth certificate."
Another writer, Robert Harari, was brought in to help them polish the story, and at the end of May 1947, they submitted their first treatment, beginning with a description of Berlin that already displayed some of the tone of the final product: "The city looked like a great hunk of burned Gorgonzola cheese on which rats had been gnawing. The rats were gone and the ants had taken over, putting some neatness into the ruins, piling the crumbs of destruction into tiny piles."
In the coming months, with a production date looming, former journalist Richard L. Breen replaced Harari on the writing team, his first screenplay assignment. Brackett and Wilder were used to going into production without a completed script, which had the advantage of not only allowing dialogue and action to develop somewhat organically but also of keeping the screenplay from the scrutiny of studio executives and film censors. A finished script was not ready until November.
The title A Foreign Affair made the studio nervous with its suggestions of both international politics and sex. Several other titles were proposed: "The Feeling Is Mutual," "Out of Bounds," "No Limit," "Irresistible," "The Honorable Phoebe Frost," "Two Loves Have I." Brackett and Wilder briefly considered one suggestion, "Operation Candybar," before returning to the original.
In spite of all their attempts to keep the script under wraps, eventually the Production Code Administration (PCA) had to weigh in on censorship matters. The PCA found plenty to be concerned about, right on the brink of production. The U.S. government, army, and members of Congress were not to be ridiculed, they said, and they objected to "an overemphasis on illicit sex" running throughout the script. Brackett and Wilder agreed to some revisions, mostly in minor language and innuendo, while managing to keep the basic plot, ideas, and tone intact.
According to Wilder biographer Maurice Zolotow, Brackett disliked the premise of the movie and the concentration on corruption and sin. He preferred the character of the prim Congresswoman played by Jean Arthur, Zolotow claims, and concentrated on writing her. It's not clear if this is entirely true, but it has long been acknowledged that Brackett was the more staid and conservative member of the team and that the two often clashed. But until they split up a couple years after this production, Wilder always described their creative partnership as one of the happiest marriages in Hollywood.
by Rob Nixon
Behind the Camera - A Foreign Affair
Location shooting of exterior backgrounds began in Berlin the summer of 1947. When Wilder arrived, he saw that the city had cleaned up a little since he was there right after the end of the war, but the results of close to 400 Allied bombing raids were still very much evident. Nearly half a million of the city's buildings had been destroyed, and although resilient Berliners were finding ways to survive, food was still scarce, the black market was thriving, and military police were everywhere. Filming in this virtual war zone suited Wilder's purposes very well, since he needed to show a destroyed city in chaos.
German-born film producer Erich Pommer had been placed in charge of the film section at the U.S. government's Information Control Division in Berlin. He helped the production by arranging for the recently reconstituted German film studio Ufa to advance the production's expenses in deutschmarks.
Because there was no raw film stock to be found in Berlin, the production had to bring its own from America.
Wilder and his crew filmed throughout Berlin for nearly a month. Their footage appears as rear projections in several scenes of the finished movie. It also forms the basis of a typically sardonic visual joke: as Captain Pringle rides through the ruins carrying a mattress he bought for his German mistress on the black market, the soundtrack plays the sweet tune "Isn't It Romantic?"
Upon completion of location shooting in early September, Wilder headed back home by way of Paris, where he stopped in to see Marlene Dietrich to convince her to take the part of the German cabaret singer and former Nazi official's mistress. Dietrich had spent most of the war traveling among Allied troops, justly lauded for her anti-fascist efforts, often at the front lines, popping back to the States only occasionally for movie roles. Her immediate reaction when Wilder brought his offer to her at the Hotel Georges V where she was staying was a quick and vehement no. She had no intention of playing a woman with a Nazi past, but Wilder wouldn't take no for an answer. He swayed her with the promise that her songs in the picture would be written by her old friend and frequent composer Friedrich Hollaender. One story has it that eventually he showed her screen tests of other actresses he claimed to be considering for the role and that did the trick (reportedly, one of them was June Havoc), although Wilder denied that such a ploy was ever used. More likely what swayed her was the fact that her screen popularity had waned and she needed a hit movie. It also helped considerably that she would be paid $110,000 with an additional $66,000 promised for overtime.
In a biography of her famous mother, Dietrich's daughter Maria Riva wrote, "She left for Hollywood in '47, quite sure that once she had designed the clothes, sung the Hollander songs, and made sure that 'Billy won't insist that the woman was really a Nazi during the war,'
A Foreign Affair would become a Dietrich film."
Wilder thought he would also have to do considerable coaxing to get his choice for the role of Congresswoman Phoebe Frost (a name no doubt chosen to suit the character's personality). Jean Arthur had not made a movie since 1944. Weary of acting and the attendant publicity after more than 20 years in the business, she decided to drop out in favor of enrollment in Stephen's College in Columbia, Missouri. "I've had to work all my life, and now I want to learn," she said. But Wilder offered her top billing and $175,000 with an extra $10,000 for four additional weeks work. Arthur dropped out of school with only two weeks remaining before final exams.
Studio filming began in Hollywood in December 1947 and continued into February.
Dietrich moved into Wilder's house during production, and the two friends had a great time together, on set and off. She was always eager to oblige when Wilder prodded her about affairs with both sexes. Future director Gerd Oswald, then assistant to Wilder, said it was rumored that Dietrich was having an affair with everyone, particularly "a couple of muscle-men stunt guys she just
devoured." John Lund called her a "mixture of siren and homebody, gracious, unfailingly professional and funny," and related a story about Winston Churchill's son, Randolph, making such a pest of himself pursuing Dietrich on a visit to the set that Wilder's wife finally threw a glass of wine at him.
Dietrich reportedly didn't think too highly of her co-stars, calling Lund "that piece of petrified wood" and referring to Arthur as "that ugly, ugly woman with that terrible American twang."
Mirroring the triangle in the plot of the movie, Arthur and Dietrich vied with each other for Wilder's attentions, with Dietrich usually coming out far ahead. Although this was their first picture together, the two Europeans were old friends, and they would frequently be off in a corner of the set, talking in German and giggling. Sometimes Wilder went to Dietrich's dressing room for lunch or tea. All of this had Arthur seething, compounded by the fact that she was always insecure about her looks and knew she was playing the Plain Jane to Dietrich's Glamour Girl in this film. Reportedly, she showed up at his house one night with her husband, producer Frank Ross, visibly shaken and eyes red from weeping. She demanded to know what he had done with a certain close-up of her, "the one where I looked so beautiful," and accused Dietrich of having forced Wilder to burn it. One story claimed he eased her concern by showing her the close-up, but Wilder always said no such shot ever existed.
"What a picture," Wilder said in frustration to John Lund. "One dame who's afraid to look in the mirror, and one who won't stop."
For the scene in which Arthur's character gets drunk and ends up being tossed in the air by rowdy soldiers, Wilder wanted to use a double, but Arthur insisted on doing it herself. After the physically strenuous take, she said loudly and pointedly, "What will you require next from me, Mr. Wilder," to a round of sympathetic applause from the crew.
Wilder biographer Maurice Zolotow claims that one of the big clashes Wilder and Brackett had on this picture was over Marlene Dietrich's first scene. She is introduced in her bombed-out shell of an apartment, brushing her teeth, and when John Lund, as her American GI lover, comes near her, she spits in his face, Zolotow says Brackett was so offended by the scene and by Wilder's flippant defense of it that he threw a phone book at the director's head.
As soon as shooting was over, Dietrich sped to New York to be with her daughter, Maria Riva, who was pregnant with Dietrich's first grandchild.
Seven-time Academy Award winner Edith Head designed the costumes. Or as she later put it: "You don't design clothes
for Dietrich, you design them
with her."
Future Emmy-winning editor John Woodcock, assisting in the cutting of the picture, recalls a moment when Wilder was reviewing the footage he shot in Berlin. Seeing aerial shots of block after block of leveled buildings, Woodcock remarked that he felt a little sorry for the Germans. Wilder jumped up in a rage: "To hell with those bastards! They burned most of my family in their damned ovens! I hope they burn in hell!"
by Rob Nixon
Behind the Camera - A Foreign Affair
Location shooting of exterior backgrounds began in Berlin the summer of 1947. When Wilder arrived, he saw that the city had cleaned up a little since he was there right after the end of the war, but the results of close to 400 Allied bombing raids were still very much evident. Nearly half a million of the city's buildings had been destroyed, and although resilient Berliners were finding ways to survive, food was still scarce, the black market was thriving, and military police were everywhere. Filming in this virtual war zone suited Wilder's purposes very well, since he needed to show a destroyed city in chaos.
German-born film producer Erich Pommer had been placed in charge of the film section at the U.S. government's Information Control Division in Berlin. He helped the production by arranging for the recently reconstituted German film studio Ufa to advance the production's expenses in deutschmarks.
Because there was no raw film stock to be found in Berlin, the production had to bring its own from America.
Wilder and his crew filmed throughout Berlin for nearly a month. Their footage appears as rear projections in several scenes of the finished movie. It also forms the basis of a typically sardonic visual joke: as Captain Pringle rides through the ruins carrying a mattress he bought for his German mistress on the black market, the soundtrack plays the sweet tune "Isn't It Romantic?"
Upon completion of location shooting in early September, Wilder headed back home by way of Paris, where he stopped in to see Marlene Dietrich to convince her to take the part of the German cabaret singer and former Nazi official's mistress. Dietrich had spent most of the war traveling among Allied troops, justly lauded for her anti-fascist efforts, often at the front lines, popping back to the States only occasionally for movie roles. Her immediate reaction when Wilder brought his offer to her at the Hotel Georges V where she was staying was a quick and vehement no. She had no intention of playing a woman with a Nazi past, but Wilder wouldn't take no for an answer. He swayed her with the promise that her songs in the picture would be written by her old friend and frequent composer Friedrich Hollaender. One story has it that eventually he showed her screen tests of other actresses he claimed to be considering for the role and that did the trick (reportedly, one of them was June Havoc), although Wilder denied that such a ploy was ever used. More likely what swayed her was the fact that her screen popularity had waned and she needed a hit movie. It also helped considerably that she would be paid $110,000 with an additional $66,000 promised for overtime.
In a biography of her famous mother, Dietrich's daughter Maria Riva wrote, "She left for Hollywood in '47, quite sure that once she had designed the clothes, sung the Hollander songs, and made sure that 'Billy won't insist that the woman was really a Nazi during the war,' A Foreign Affair would become a Dietrich film."
Wilder thought he would also have to do considerable coaxing to get his choice for the role of Congresswoman Phoebe Frost (a name no doubt chosen to suit the character's personality). Jean Arthur had not made a movie since 1944. Weary of acting and the attendant publicity after more than 20 years in the business, she decided to drop out in favor of enrollment in Stephen's College in Columbia, Missouri. "I've had to work all my life, and now I want to learn," she said. But Wilder offered her top billing and $175,000 with an extra $10,000 for four additional weeks work. Arthur dropped out of school with only two weeks remaining before final exams.
Studio filming began in Hollywood in December 1947 and continued into February.
Dietrich moved into Wilder's house during production, and the two friends had a great time together, on set and off. She was always eager to oblige when Wilder prodded her about affairs with both sexes. Future director Gerd Oswald, then assistant to Wilder, said it was rumored that Dietrich was having an affair with everyone, particularly "a couple of muscle-men stunt guys she just devoured." John Lund called her a "mixture of siren and homebody, gracious, unfailingly professional and funny," and related a story about Winston Churchill's son, Randolph, making such a pest of himself pursuing Dietrich on a visit to the set that Wilder's wife finally threw a glass of wine at him.
Dietrich reportedly didn't think too highly of her co-stars, calling Lund "that piece of petrified wood" and referring to Arthur as "that ugly, ugly woman with that terrible American twang."
Mirroring the triangle in the plot of the movie, Arthur and Dietrich vied with each other for Wilder's attentions, with Dietrich usually coming out far ahead. Although this was their first picture together, the two Europeans were old friends, and they would frequently be off in a corner of the set, talking in German and giggling. Sometimes Wilder went to Dietrich's dressing room for lunch or tea. All of this had Arthur seething, compounded by the fact that she was always insecure about her looks and knew she was playing the Plain Jane to Dietrich's Glamour Girl in this film. Reportedly, she showed up at his house one night with her husband, producer Frank Ross, visibly shaken and eyes red from weeping. She demanded to know what he had done with a certain close-up of her, "the one where I looked so beautiful," and accused Dietrich of having forced Wilder to burn it. One story claimed he eased her concern by showing her the close-up, but Wilder always said no such shot ever existed.
"What a picture," Wilder said in frustration to John Lund. "One dame who's afraid to look in the mirror, and one who won't stop."
For the scene in which Arthur's character gets drunk and ends up being tossed in the air by rowdy soldiers, Wilder wanted to use a double, but Arthur insisted on doing it herself. After the physically strenuous take, she said loudly and pointedly, "What will you require next from me, Mr. Wilder," to a round of sympathetic applause from the crew.
Wilder biographer Maurice Zolotow claims that one of the big clashes Wilder and Brackett had on this picture was over Marlene Dietrich's first scene. She is introduced in her bombed-out shell of an apartment, brushing her teeth, and when John Lund, as her American GI lover, comes near her, she spits in his face, Zolotow says Brackett was so offended by the scene and by Wilder's flippant defense of it that he threw a phone book at the director's head.
As soon as shooting was over, Dietrich sped to New York to be with her daughter, Maria Riva, who was pregnant with Dietrich's first grandchild.
Seven-time Academy Award winner Edith Head designed the costumes. Or as she later put it: "You don't design clothes for Dietrich, you design them with her."
Future Emmy-winning editor John Woodcock, assisting in the cutting of the picture, recalls a moment when Wilder was reviewing the footage he shot in Berlin. Seeing aerial shots of block after block of leveled buildings, Woodcock remarked that he felt a little sorry for the Germans. Wilder jumped up in a rage: "To hell with those bastards! They burned most of my family in their damned ovens! I hope they burn in hell!"
by Rob Nixon
A Foreign Affair
In the late 1930s, Marlene Dietrich had refused offers from the Third Reich to return to Germany. She despised Hitler and what he was doing to her beloved homeland, and she became an American citizen in 1939. During World War II, she entertained U.S. troops and made anti-Nazi propaganda broadcasts in German.
After the war, director Billy Wilder decided to make
A Foreign Affair (1948), a satiric comedy about the rampant corruption during the Allied occupation of Berlin. A prim Congresswoman (Jean Arthur), part of a committee investigating the morale - and morals - of American occupation troops, falls for an American officer (John Lund). He happens to be involved with a seductive nightclub singer who had been the mistress of a high-ranking Nazi. Wilder knew that Dietrich's unassailable anti-Nazi credentials, and her war record, made her an unlikely, yet ideal, choice to play the chanteuse. But Dietrich, repelled by the idea of playing a Nazi, refused. On the pretext of asking Dietrich's advice on casting the role, Wilder showed her screen tests of two American actresses, and asked what she thought of their accents. Dietrich was appalled, and (as Wilder hoped) told him that nobody but she could play the role. Just before filming began on
A Foreign Affair, Marlene Dietrich was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the U.S. government's highest civilian honor, for her wartime service.
Most of the film was shot in Hollywood. But before principal photography began, Wilder spent time in Berlin shooting background footage of the devastated city. Cleverly incorporated into the film, the footage added an ironic counterpoint to the comedy. Dietrich was delighted to be working with Wilder, whom she'd known in Berlin in the 1920s. But their constant joking and reminiscing in German annoyed Jean Arthur, who hadn't made a film in several years, and was notoriously insecure. One night, Arthur showed up at Wilder's house and hysterically accused him of destroying her close-ups to please Dietrich. Weary of Dietrich's narcissism and Arthur's paranoia, Wilder complained to John Lund that he had "one dame who's afraid to look in the mirror, and another who won't stop." All that self-absorption paid off for Dietrich, however. At 46 and about to become a grandmother, she looked stunning and sang Frederick Hollander's bitter, melancholy songs with great panache. Hollander, who had written Dietrich's cabaret numbers in
The Blue Angel (1930), and accompanied her in that film, also plays her pianist in
A Foreign Affair.
Probably Dietrich's most controversial film,
A Foreign Affair was the first of Wilder's movies to arouse widespread debate. Some critics thought it was brilliant and sardonic. Others reacted negatively to a comedy about postwar profiteering, and were horrified that the filmmakers considered Nazi war crimes a fit subject for comedy. Wilder was denounced on the floor of Congress. The army banned
A Foreign Affair in occupied Germany but it was finally shown there in 1977, to great acclaim. Today, the arguments about the film rage on among film scholars and Billy Wilder aficionados. But about Dietrich's performance, there has always been unanimity: it is one of her very best.
Producer: Charles Brackett
Director: Billy Wilder
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Richard L. Breen, Robert Harari; adapted by David Shaw; story by Billy Wilder
Editor: Doane Harrison
Cinematography: Charles B. Lang
Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Walter Tyler
Music: Frederick Hollander
Cast: Jean Arthur (Phoebe Frost), Marlene Dietrich (Erica von Schluetow, John Lund (Captain John Pringle), Millard Mitchell (Colonel Rufus J. Plummer), Peter von Zerneck (Hans Otto Birgel), Frederick Hollander (Pianist).
BW-116m.
by Margarita Landazuri
A Foreign Affair
In the late 1930s, Marlene Dietrich had refused offers from the Third Reich to return to Germany. She despised Hitler and what he was doing to her beloved homeland, and she became an American citizen in 1939. During World War II, she entertained U.S. troops and made anti-Nazi propaganda broadcasts in German.
After the war, director Billy Wilder decided to make A Foreign Affair (1948), a satiric comedy about the rampant corruption during the Allied occupation of Berlin. A prim Congresswoman (Jean Arthur), part of a committee investigating the morale - and morals - of American occupation troops, falls for an American officer (John Lund). He happens to be involved with a seductive nightclub singer who had been the mistress of a high-ranking Nazi. Wilder knew that Dietrich's unassailable anti-Nazi credentials, and her war record, made her an unlikely, yet ideal, choice to play the chanteuse. But Dietrich, repelled by the idea of playing a Nazi, refused. On the pretext of asking Dietrich's advice on casting the role, Wilder showed her screen tests of two American actresses, and asked what she thought of their accents. Dietrich was appalled, and (as Wilder hoped) told him that nobody but she could play the role. Just before filming began on A Foreign Affair, Marlene Dietrich was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the U.S. government's highest civilian honor, for her wartime service.
Most of the film was shot in Hollywood. But before principal photography began, Wilder spent time in Berlin shooting background footage of the devastated city. Cleverly incorporated into the film, the footage added an ironic counterpoint to the comedy. Dietrich was delighted to be working with Wilder, whom she'd known in Berlin in the 1920s. But their constant joking and reminiscing in German annoyed Jean Arthur, who hadn't made a film in several years, and was notoriously insecure. One night, Arthur showed up at Wilder's house and hysterically accused him of destroying her close-ups to please Dietrich. Weary of Dietrich's narcissism and Arthur's paranoia, Wilder complained to John Lund that he had "one dame who's afraid to look in the mirror, and another who won't stop." All that self-absorption paid off for Dietrich, however. At 46 and about to become a grandmother, she looked stunning and sang Frederick Hollander's bitter, melancholy songs with great panache. Hollander, who had written Dietrich's cabaret numbers in The Blue Angel (1930), and accompanied her in that film, also plays her pianist in A Foreign Affair.
Probably Dietrich's most controversial film, A Foreign Affair was the first of Wilder's movies to arouse widespread debate. Some critics thought it was brilliant and sardonic. Others reacted negatively to a comedy about postwar profiteering, and were horrified that the filmmakers considered Nazi war crimes a fit subject for comedy. Wilder was denounced on the floor of Congress. The army banned A Foreign Affair in occupied Germany but it was finally shown there in 1977, to great acclaim. Today, the arguments about the film rage on among film scholars and Billy Wilder aficionados. But about Dietrich's performance, there has always been unanimity: it is one of her very best.
Producer: Charles Brackett
Director: Billy Wilder
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Richard L. Breen, Robert Harari; adapted by David Shaw; story by Billy Wilder
Editor: Doane Harrison
Cinematography: Charles B. Lang
Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Walter Tyler
Music: Frederick Hollander
Cast: Jean Arthur (Phoebe Frost), Marlene Dietrich (Erica von Schluetow, John Lund (Captain John Pringle), Millard Mitchell (Colonel Rufus J. Plummer), Peter von Zerneck (Hans Otto Birgel), Frederick Hollander (Pianist).
BW-116m.
by Margarita Landazuri
Critics' Corner - A Foreign Affair
The film premiered at New York's Paramount Theatre on either June 30 or July 1, 1948 (sources differ) and went into brief general release in August. It was only a moderate success, thanks in part to its early withdrawal from most screens.
Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Charles Lang), Best Writing, Screenplay (Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Richard L. Breen)
Writers Guild of America nomination for Best Written American Comedy
The picture was denounced as "rotten" on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Department of Defense issued a statement saying the movie gave a false picture of the occupation army. It then banned it from being shown in Germany. Under fire from so many sides, Paramount quietly withdrew the film from general release.
"Crude, superficial, and insensible to certain responsibilities.... Berlin's trials and tribulations are not the stuff of cheap comedy, and rubble makes lousy custard pies." Stuart Schulberg, U.S. Army official who evaluated films for release to the troops, 1948
"I was in the army and I was in Berlin. ... All right, this is fiction, but let me tell you things I observed that are absent. It is not just the American or the Russian occupiers that behave like this. Every occupying, victorious army rapes, plunders, stealsthat is a rule that goes way back to the Persians." Billy Wilder, responding to the film's being banned in occupied Germany
The film was finally shown in Germany in 1977 to critical and popular acclaim.
"A dandy entertainment which has some shrewd and realistic things to say. Congress may not like this picture...and even the Department of the Army may find it a shade embarrassing. ... 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. Much credit is due the performers. Jean Arthur is beautifully droll as the prim and punctilious Congresswoman.... And John Lund is disarmingly shameless as the brash American captain. ... But it is really Marlene Dietrich who does the most fascinating job.... For in Miss Dietrich's restless femininity, in her subtle suggestions of mocking scorn and in her daringly forward singing of 'Illusions' and 'Black Market,' two stinging songs, are centered not only the essence of the picture's romantic allure, but also its vagrant cynicism and its unmistakable point." Bosley Crowther,
New York Times, July 1, 1948
"Some sharp, nasty, funny stuff at the expense of investigatory Americans; thenas in
The Emperor Waltzthe picture endorses everything it has been kidding and worse. A good bit of it is in rotten taste, and the perfection of that is in Dietrich's song 'Black Market.'" James Agee,
Nation, July 24, 1948
"Dietrich steals the show in an uproarious Hollywood view of low life in Berlin."
Life, July 1948
"Except for an occasional nagging thought that maybe Berlin isn't precisely the proper locale for a farce these days, I had a pretty good time."
The New Yorker, 1948
"A messy conglomeration of bumbling humor, pointless vulgarity, and occasionally comic caricature. The picture's three central characters are thoroughly repulsive...thrown together in a gutter romance."
Cue, July 1948
"Looking back from the perspective of almost thirty years, it is evident that
Foreign Affair was one of the first realistic and honest post-war films and, in my opinion, was on an artistic level with the works of De Sica and Rossellini. It cut deeply and meanly and it told the truth, which was that under pressure men and women do not follow the Ten Commandments." Maurice Zolotow,
Billy Wilder in Hollywood (Proscenium, 1977)
"As relevant to the current American involvement in Iraq as if it had been made yesterday. ... This talky, intelligent, cynical film is startling even now, with dry jokes about gas chambers and brainwashed youngsters still carving swastikas everywhere. Lines like this, from a former Nazi to her American protector, make you wince: 'I have a new Fuhrer now: you. Heil, Johnny.' Imagine how this must have struck audiences at the time, just a few years after the war! I'd love to see a modern director with Wilder's bravery take on the challenge of portraying how a contemporary occupying army deal with a country full of 'open graves and closed hearts.'" Andrea Mullaney,
Eye for Film
Critics Richard Corliss and Andrew Sarris have claimed Wilder's presentation of Jean Arthur on screen was brutal and abusive, with Corliss saying she was "photographed with all the gentleness of a mug shot." But Wilder claimed in later years that Arthur called him after seeing the film on television and gushed about how great it was and how wonderful her close-ups were.
by Rob Nixon
Critics' Corner - A Foreign Affair
The film premiered at New York's Paramount Theatre on either June 30 or July 1, 1948 (sources differ) and went into brief general release in August. It was only a moderate success, thanks in part to its early withdrawal from most screens.
Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Charles Lang), Best Writing, Screenplay (Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Richard L. Breen)
Writers Guild of America nomination for Best Written American Comedy
The picture was denounced as "rotten" on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Department of Defense issued a statement saying the movie gave a false picture of the occupation army. It then banned it from being shown in Germany. Under fire from so many sides, Paramount quietly withdrew the film from general release.
"Crude, superficial, and insensible to certain responsibilities.... Berlin's trials and tribulations are not the stuff of cheap comedy, and rubble makes lousy custard pies." Stuart Schulberg, U.S. Army official who evaluated films for release to the troops, 1948
"I was in the army and I was in Berlin. ... All right, this is fiction, but let me tell you things I observed that are absent. It is not just the American or the Russian occupiers that behave like this. Every occupying, victorious army rapes, plunders, stealsthat is a rule that goes way back to the Persians." Billy Wilder, responding to the film's being banned in occupied Germany
The film was finally shown in Germany in 1977 to critical and popular acclaim.
"A dandy entertainment which has some shrewd and realistic things to say. Congress may not like this picture...and even the Department of the Army may find it a shade embarrassing. ... 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. Much credit is due the performers. Jean Arthur is beautifully droll as the prim and punctilious Congresswoman.... And John Lund is disarmingly shameless as the brash American captain. ... But it is really Marlene Dietrich who does the most fascinating job.... For in Miss Dietrich's restless femininity, in her subtle suggestions of mocking scorn and in her daringly forward singing of 'Illusions' and 'Black Market,' two stinging songs, are centered not only the essence of the picture's romantic allure, but also its vagrant cynicism and its unmistakable point." Bosley Crowther, New York Times, July 1, 1948
"Some sharp, nasty, funny stuff at the expense of investigatory Americans; thenas in The Emperor Waltzthe picture endorses everything it has been kidding and worse. A good bit of it is in rotten taste, and the perfection of that is in Dietrich's song 'Black Market.'" James Agee, Nation, July 24, 1948
"Dietrich steals the show in an uproarious Hollywood view of low life in Berlin." Life, July 1948
"Except for an occasional nagging thought that maybe Berlin isn't precisely the proper locale for a farce these days, I had a pretty good time." The New Yorker, 1948
"A messy conglomeration of bumbling humor, pointless vulgarity, and occasionally comic caricature. The picture's three central characters are thoroughly repulsive...thrown together in a gutter romance." Cue, July 1948
"Looking back from the perspective of almost thirty years, it is evident that Foreign Affair was one of the first realistic and honest post-war films and, in my opinion, was on an artistic level with the works of De Sica and Rossellini. It cut deeply and meanly and it told the truth, which was that under pressure men and women do not follow the Ten Commandments." Maurice Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood (Proscenium, 1977)
"As relevant to the current American involvement in Iraq as if it had been made yesterday. ... This talky, intelligent, cynical film is startling even now, with dry jokes about gas chambers and brainwashed youngsters still carving swastikas everywhere. Lines like this, from a former Nazi to her American protector, make you wince: 'I have a new Fuhrer now: you. Heil, Johnny.' Imagine how this must have struck audiences at the time, just a few years after the war! I'd love to see a modern director with Wilder's bravery take on the challenge of portraying how a contemporary occupying army deal with a country full of 'open graves and closed hearts.'" Andrea Mullaney, Eye for Film
Critics Richard Corliss and Andrew Sarris have claimed Wilder's presentation of Jean Arthur on screen was brutal and abusive, with Corliss saying she was "photographed with all the gentleness of a mug shot." But Wilder claimed in later years that Arthur called him after seeing the film on television and gushed about how great it was and how wonderful her close-ups were.
by Rob Nixon
TCM Remembers - Billy Wilder
A FOND FAREWELL TO ONE OF HOLLYWOOD'S MOST GIFTED DIRECTORS - BILLY WILDER, 11906-2002
Billy Wilder had the most deliciously dirty mind in Hollywood. The director dug into racy, controversial subjects with cynical wit and rare candor; he set new standards for film noir, sex comedies and the buddy film and his movies continue to inspire new generations of filmmakers.
Cameron Crowe, screenwriter and director of contemporary hit films such as Jerry Maguire(1996), was one of those moved by Wilder's film sense. The struggling filmmaker struck up a friendship with the 93-year old veteran and found a friend and a mentor. Their conversations were recently chronicled in a book by Cameron Crowe entitled Conversations with Wilder(published by Knoft).
Billy Wilder might have been born in Vienna, but American culture influenced him from the earliest days. Given the name Samuel, Wilder's mother called her son 'Billy' in honor of Buffalo Bill Cody. The name stuck.
Billy was as restless as his namesake and left law school to become a journalist. While grinding out articles for a Berlin newspaper, Wilder joined with future film directors Fred Zinnemann, Robert Sidomak and Edgar G. Ulmer to make a short film, Menschen Am Sonntag (1929). By the mid-1930s, he had written seven scenarios and even tried his hand at directing. After Hitler's rise to power in 1934, Wilder fled his homeland. Once in Hollywood, Wilder and roommate Peter Lorre had to learn English quickly if they wanted to join the American film industry. Together the German expatriates learned the language and began staking their territory in the Dream Factory.
As a writer, Wilder could craft realistic relationships with sharp dialogue; he proved this in his scripts for Ninotchka (1939) with Greta Garbo and Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire(1941). As a filmmaker, Wilder was well acquainted with the shadowy, brooding style of German Expressionism. He brought these two gifts together to create a landmark film noir - DOUBLE INDEMNITY(1944). He followed this cinematic triumph with a risky project, the story of an alcoholic on a three-day binge. Not the usual subject matter for a Hollywood studio, THE LOST WEEKEND (1945) nevertheless claimed the Academy Award for Best Picture. By the end of the decade, Wilder dared even to paint a portrait of Hollywood stardom gone awry in Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Each of these films is an undisputed classic today, but even at the time, his films were lauded. Six of his screenplays were nominated for Oscars between 1941-1950. Three of his eight Best Director nominations also came during this period. Billy Wilder claimed the American Dream; he was successfully playing by his own rules.
By the end of the '50s, as censorship guidelines were easing, Wilder's projects became even more daring. Sex was central to Wilder's world and Hollywood celebrated his candor. He directed Marilyn Monroe in two of her most sensuous roles, The Seven Year Itch (1955) and SOME LIKE IT HOT(1959). More often than not, Wilder liked pointing his finger at the hyprocrisy of people's sexual mores. In THE APARTMENT(1960), Wilder took an incisive look at corrupt businessmen exploiting their employees for sexual favors. In IRMA LA DOUCE (1963), the world of a Parisian prostitute was lovingly painted in Technicolor tones. In Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), Wilder finally stepped over the line with the story of a struggling composer willing to offer his wife to sell a song.The film, which seems so innocent today, was scandalous in its own day. Critics called Kiss Me, Stupid pornographic smut and buried the picture. Audiences ignored it. Today, the film is a risque farce with great performances by Dean Martin and Kim Novak. The critical lambast deeply affected Wilder; this would be his last sex comedy.
In 1966 Wilder brought together the dynamic combination of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau with THE FORTUNE COOKIE. Director and stars teamed again for The Front Page (1974), a remake of the newspaper classic; and Buddy, Buddy (1981), the story of an assassin and a sad sack ready to commit suicide.
Wilder's many years in Hollywood produced an amazing string of hits. From sarcastic and cynical social commentary to outrageous sex farce, Wilder pushed his audiences to look at their own values and morals. He was an outsider who wasn't afraid to point out the follies of his fellow man or the worst aspects of American culture. He will be sorely missed.
By Jeremy Geltzer
TCM Remembers - Billy Wilder
A FOND FAREWELL TO ONE OF HOLLYWOOD'S MOST GIFTED DIRECTORS - BILLY WILDER, 11906-2002
Billy Wilder had the most deliciously dirty mind in Hollywood. The director dug into racy, controversial subjects with cynical wit and rare candor; he set new standards for film noir, sex comedies and the buddy film and his movies continue to inspire new generations of filmmakers.
Cameron Crowe, screenwriter and director of contemporary hit films such as Jerry Maguire(1996), was one of those moved by Wilder's film sense. The struggling filmmaker struck up a friendship with the 93-year old veteran and found a friend and a mentor. Their conversations were recently chronicled in a book by Cameron Crowe entitled Conversations with Wilder(published by Knoft).
Billy Wilder might have been born in Vienna, but American culture influenced him from the earliest days. Given the name Samuel, Wilder's mother called her son 'Billy' in honor of Buffalo Bill Cody. The name stuck.
Billy was as restless as his namesake and left law school to become a journalist. While grinding out articles for a Berlin newspaper, Wilder joined with future film directors Fred Zinnemann, Robert Sidomak and Edgar G. Ulmer to make a short film, Menschen Am Sonntag (1929). By the mid-1930s, he had written seven scenarios and even tried his hand at directing. After Hitler's rise to power in 1934, Wilder fled his homeland. Once in Hollywood, Wilder and roommate Peter Lorre had to learn English quickly if they wanted to join the American film industry. Together the German expatriates learned the language and began staking their territory in the Dream Factory.
As a writer, Wilder could craft realistic relationships with sharp dialogue; he proved this in his scripts for Ninotchka (1939) with Greta Garbo and Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire(1941). As a filmmaker, Wilder was well acquainted with the shadowy, brooding style of German Expressionism. He brought these two gifts together to create a landmark film noir - DOUBLE INDEMNITY(1944). He followed this cinematic triumph with a risky project, the story of an alcoholic on a three-day binge. Not the usual subject matter for a Hollywood studio, THE LOST WEEKEND (1945) nevertheless claimed the Academy Award for Best Picture. By the end of the decade, Wilder dared even to paint a portrait of Hollywood stardom gone awry in Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Each of these films is an undisputed classic today, but even at the time, his films were lauded. Six of his screenplays were nominated for Oscars between 1941-1950. Three of his eight Best Director nominations also came during this period. Billy Wilder claimed the American Dream; he was successfully playing by his own rules.
By the end of the '50s, as censorship guidelines were easing, Wilder's projects became even more daring. Sex was central to Wilder's world and Hollywood celebrated his candor. He directed Marilyn Monroe in two of her most sensuous roles, The Seven Year Itch (1955) and SOME LIKE IT HOT(1959). More often than not, Wilder liked pointing his finger at the hyprocrisy of people's sexual mores. In THE APARTMENT(1960), Wilder took an incisive look at corrupt businessmen exploiting their employees for sexual favors. In IRMA LA DOUCE (1963), the world of a Parisian prostitute was lovingly painted in Technicolor tones. In Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), Wilder finally stepped over the line with the story of a struggling composer willing to offer his wife to sell a song.The film, which seems so innocent today, was scandalous in its own day. Critics called Kiss Me, Stupid pornographic smut and buried the picture. Audiences ignored it. Today, the film is a risque farce with great performances by Dean Martin and Kim Novak. The critical lambast deeply affected Wilder; this would be his last sex comedy.
In 1966 Wilder brought together the dynamic combination of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau with THE FORTUNE COOKIE. Director and stars teamed again for The Front Page (1974), a remake of the newspaper classic; and Buddy, Buddy (1981), the story of an assassin and a sad sack ready to commit suicide.
Wilder's many years in Hollywood produced an amazing string of hits. From sarcastic and cynical social commentary to outrageous sex farce, Wilder pushed his audiences to look at their own values and morals. He was an outsider who wasn't afraid to point out the follies of his fellow man or the worst aspects of American culture. He will be sorely missed.
By Jeremy Geltzer
