A Foreign Affair(1948, d. Billy Wilder)

Recently here at Cinema Styles Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair came up in the comment section and having never seen it was excited to find out it was playing at the A.F.I. Silver as a part of the Jean Arthur Retrospective that wraps up this week. My wife and I took advantage the opportunity to see this lesser known Wilder and were more than pleased with the result.


The story takes place in post-war Berlin as a group of United States Senators and Representatives visit the bombed out city to assess the morale of the occupation troops. One of those representatives is Phoebe Frost, played by Jean Arthur, a stalwart Republican from Iowa, clean, prudish and repressed. Obviously, just her read her name again. Upon arriving Frost meets Captain John Pringle, played by John Lund, and quickly makes him her liaison to the seamy side of Berlin so she can blow the roof off of the whole occupation, one she views as being knee deep in black markets and fraternization with ex-Nazi women. And, she's right. Problem is, Captain Pringle is the biggest black market wheeler and dealer out there and happens to be having an affair with a former Nazi seductress, Erika Von Schluetow, played by the magnificent Marlene Dietrich. Trying to keep his illegal activities a secret from Frost while keeping Von Schluetow out of the labor camps becomes the new 24 hour job of Pringle. It's a job made more complicated by his growing feelings for Frost, feelings easier to succumb to when further information is uncovered that Von Schluetow may have fraternized all the way up to Hitler.


Coming into theaters in 1948 this is delicate material to say the least and it's probably true that the only way one could have presented post-war Berlin (much of the movie was actually shot there) so soon after the war was in a romantic comedy so as not to recall too many painful memories for the audiences. It's a tightrope walk at which Wilder succeeds, lightening the mood just when talk of Nazis and Hitler and concentration camps is getting a little too heavy. And what must it have been like for Dietrich doing a scene with actors made up to look like Goebbels and Hitler? Whatever the feelings were during the production, the three leads produce excellent work throughout. Jean Arthur is probably the least of the three only because she succumbs to heavy-handed comic pantomime and borderline silent movie expressions while the other two leads remain restrained in their approach. Still, she makes her character strong and sympathetic, not an easy job considering it's the one character in the whole thing that approaches caricature. If there is any blame to be levelled here it is at Wilder for making Frost so out of sync with the rest of the characters. Making her character a little less prudish, and a lot less easily bowled over by romance, would have made both the character and the movie much stronger.

John Lund on the other hand is perfectly cast. There was some discussion in the comments here as to whether his casting was a mistake or not and I have to say it was dead-on accurate. Captain John Pringle isn't Clark Gable, Captain John Pringle is an American soldier working the black market and bedding ex-Nazis who likes to think he's Clark Gable. His Gable moustache combined with his average-to-good looks work perfectly in a kind of "big fish in a small pond" way. As far as the bombed out refugees are concerned, especially ex-Nazis like Von Schluetow who needs someone she can use to keep her out of the labor camps, this guy is the best thing going. Back home he'd be just another poser, but here he's a hot property. A Bulova in a display full of Cartier's may not look too impressive but on the counter at the local convenience store next to a row of Timexes, it looks a lot better.


But no matter how good Arthur and Lund are it is Marlene that steals every scene, every frame, hell, the whole movie. Marlene Dietrich is a personal favorite and this movie does nothing to change that. There is an intelligence behind the way Dietrich speaks her lines that always makes me feel like she's the smartest person on the set, even when Orson Welles is hanging around. I'm not saying I think Lund and Arthur were unintelligent people, or anyone else Dietrich worked with, just that Dietrich had something, a knowingness that she couldn't hide. It's on display here in all it's glory and if Billy Wilder ever achieved a moment of perfection in casting, it's here. Von Schluetow needs a mixture of intellect and sexual energy to keep herself out of prison and Dietrich makes you believe that this ex-Nazi could successfully convince an officer in the United States Army to manipulate her files and cover up the truth.

A Foreign Affair is not a well known Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett collaboration and is not available on DVD but it should be better known than it is. It portrays a post-war occupation army in Berlin probably much closer to reality than any serious drama of the time would have done. Showing soldiers taking advantage of desperate locals on the black market, consorting with ex-Nazis and breaking curfew to engage in illicit activities around the clock would most likely have caused an outrage had it been presented in a dramatic, expose kind of a way. But as a comedy, it seems acceptable. And quite enjoyable.

Easy Living(1937, d. Mitchell Leisen)

Saturday night my wife and I and the youngest took in Easy Living at the A.F.I. as a part of their tribute to Jean Arthur this February. Made in 1937 it was written by Preston Sturges who was still more than a couple of years away from directing his scripts and so directing duties fell to renowned Hollywood director Mitchell Leisen, director of such films as Death Takes a Holiday, To Each His Own and Captain Carey, U.S.A. among many, many others. And while the three of us enjoyed ourselves and the movie, it did leave me asking the question, "Can a comedy be too screwball?"

Apropos of the finest tradition of screwball comedy the plot is absurd in the extreme. Edward Arnold plays J.B. Ball, a wealthy banker whose son, John Ball, Jr., played by Ray Milland, doesn't want to be idly rich but instead work and earn his money so he stomps out on breakfast with his father after explaining this and we don't see him again until halfway through the movie excepting that in the meantime J.B.'s wife buys a $58,000 mink coat without asking and J.B. throws another of her coats out the window which lands on Mary's head (Jean Arthur) who tries to give it back but instead he buys her a fur hat and everyone thinks they're having an affair and then a hotel J.B.'s about to foreclose on puts her up as a guest thinking he won't foreclose if his mistress lives there and then she meets John working at the automat and he gets fired trying to give her free food and then somewhere, somehow, J.B.'s stocks crumble because Mary gets asked about steel and asks John and... (takes in deep breath)... Oh Christ, I don't know. Frankly, it's no more absurd than Libeled Lady or My Man Godfrey or The Awful Truth but it feels more absurd, or at least more frantic.

There's a breathlessness to the film that's expected from a screwball comedy but Mitchell Leisen makes the mistake of keeping the pitch at fever level from opening frame to last, not just in pace but in attitude. There's nary a moment in the film when the characters aren't yelling their lines and at least 50 percent of the film's total screentime involves pratfalls. I'm not kidding, at least half the movie involves long sequences of falls and foodfights and tumbles down stairs. Everyone falls all the time and when they're not falling, they're yelling about falling, or yelling that someone else yelled that they yelled about falling. You get the point. Yelling and falling. They're in ample supply throughout.

All the Preston Sturges trademarks are here, including a little sex, as well as character actors like William Demarest in a brief two minute role a couple of years before he would become a Sturges standby in the forties. What's not here is Preston Sturges the director, pulling on the reins tightly. Sturges movies were barely contained free-for-alls but they were contained. This one is just a free-for-all. Think about Sullivan's Travels or The Lady Eve and think about all the craziness that's broken up by all the non-craziness. In Sullivan's Travels there's the poolside scene, several moments on the bus, McCrea and Lake in Shantytown, at the diner and so on. Each wacky scene is broken up by three or four sedate scenes to draw the audience back into the story. But here there is one sedate scene that I recall, and only one. A brief scene in Mary's suite where she and John talk about life and work. For a couple of minutes. Then it's back to yelling and falling.

It seems strange to think Sturges would have made a difference as a director with the same script he himself wrote but bear with me. There are many scenes in the film that should be played sedately and aren't. There are scenes between J.B. and his wife Jenny (Mary Nash), in his office, or with his secretary in his office, that could've and should've been played straight but Leisen has them yell their lines throughout. I don't think Sturges would have made that choice and I think it was the direction of his scripts by people like Leisen that prompted Sturges to give a shot at directing himself. I believe Leisen was under the mistaken conclusion that for screwball to work it had to be played at the top of one's lungs. Sturges understood you have to pull it in so that the audience relaxes at which point you uncork the dam again and drown your audience in fits of laughter.

As for the acting, Jean Arthur walks away with the whole film, even though she appears in only roughly half of it (and Arnold's character the other half). Unlike Arnold and Milland and Nash, fine actors all who do fine work here as well, Arthur's character is the only one that doesn't yell very much and is given the time develop, at least a little bit, while everyone else bulges their eyes and busts their prats.

In the end, the three of us enjoyed it for what it was and certainly couldn't fault it on pacing or length. We had a nice night taking in a movie and a late dinner (pizza, for the curious) but I have a feeling the movie portion of our evening would have delighted us more had Mr. Sturges been behind the wheel. Maybe that's the mark of a great director, when all you can think about is how much better it would have been with him in charge. Leisen was a skilled and talented director no doubt, but the best director for a Sturges script, it turns out, is Sturges. Certainly something to talk about at least. Just don't yell.