"Billy could have said with John F. Kennedy, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ "

[selenak]

I've been meaning to link this for a while: a brilliant and lengthy essay about one of Billy Wilder's lesser known movies, A Foreign Affair, which is brilliant. (Both the essay and the movie.) It's here. It calls the movie the most devastating and personal film of Billy Wilder’s extraordinary career in American cinema which, in a career that includes the likes of Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, Double Indemnity and Ace in the Hole, says a lot. I'm not sure that I agree about "most devastating" in general, but if you combine it with "personal", then yes, the essay believably makes its case.

It also uses the background of its creation. So what do you do if you're a scriptwriter/director who as a young man had his first few sucesses in (and about) Berlin and loved the city then, with a passion, then had to emigrate to save your life because of the Nazis, then fell in love with the English language and America and made a career there, then came back as part of the Allied occupying forces (film crew branch) to supervise concentration camp footage edited into reeducation movies for the German population, then got confirmation from the Red Cross that most of your family who didn't make it out of Europe was murdered in Auschwitz, and then you get greenlighted a Berlin-based film, supposedly a comedy also about reeducation? If you're Billy Wilder, you ask fellow emigré Marlene Dietrich to play a card-carrying (ex, or is she?) Nazi cabaret singer, ask fellow emigré Friedrich Holländer to contribute songs for her and make A Foreign Affair.

The movie wasn't a success as far as Paramount was concerned. In the US, there were complaints that not only did it make fun of the US forces and didn't present them in a very flattering light (the male lead is a G.I. involved in the black market, and one of Wilder's typical male sell-outs, at first using his charm to distract Congresswoman Phoebe (played by Jean Arthur) from finding out he's the very thing she's supposed to be investigating while also carrying on an affair with Erika the cabaret singer), it also was mean to Jean Arthur by presenting her as as frumpy and uptight next to Marlene Dietrich.(As the article puts it: " On paper, Wilder’s film might have been viewed officially as offering a positive appraisal of the occupying forces – but that was before anyone saw it. (...) The Department of Defense issued a statement to the effect that the film gave a false account of the occupying forces’ activities abroad .") In Germany, it wasn't even released for a few more decades, having been deemed unsuitable to its ostensible purpose of moral education. (No kidding. No German gets morally reeducated in this picture.)

Sadly, YouTube doesn't have many usable clips from it. This one intercuts footage from the actual movie with footage showing the Berlin ruins in the immediate post war years from other sources:

"ruins of berlin - marlene dietrich - scenes from a foreign affair and more 1945-47" (Watch on YouTube)

This sequence, otoh, is entirely from the movie and probably Marlene Dietrich's best non-singing scene in it, focused on her character, Erika the morally ambiguous singer, and Phoebe the Congresswoman, who is undercover trying to pose as a German in order to investigate fraternizing G.I.s but gets caught up in a raid.

"Marlene Dietrich - A Foreign Affair" (Watch on YouTube)

It's very much worth watching in its entirety. If you can't, read the article anyway. It's that good.

Comments

[chelseagirl]

I'd be interested in seeing how the film depicted a Congresswoman in those days, when there must have been so very few.

Poor Phoebe, with her actual eyebrows, as opposed to Erika's painted-on ones.

[selenak]

She's about as realistic a Congresswoman as Ninotchka (another Wilder-written woman, with Lubitsch directing) is a Soviet apparatchik, I'd say. That's not meant as a put-down; for example, while Billy W. isn't free of -isms in general, he's not implying either woman just does this job thing until the right guy appears. Phoebe Frost at no point, either before falling in love, or during the time she doesn't know the truth about Pringle, nor after, declares her intention to retire in marriage. In theory, you could have a male congressman getting her story through the movie, with the only difference being that male Mr. Frost would (in 1948) not fall for a G.I. but fall in love with Erika directly. He'd also have to be a conservative from Iowa, which is what Phoebe is. That at the start of the scene I linked she doesn't want to announce her identity to the police - because she's caught up in a raid of a night club, and explaining the whole "I was undercover!" thing wouldn't play with the media at home - is perhaps the most career politician attitude Phoebe shows. Otherwise she starts out as prissy, but not in a hypocritical way (i.e. she really believes what she says).

Mind you, a conservative politician bent on investigating morale and fraternization with the barely-not-enemy anymore in a movie conceived in 1947 and released in 1948 presumably would have associated the just-getting-in-their-stride HUAC for contemporary viewers, so Wilder (decidedly not a Republican, from Iowa or any other place) might have meant Phoebe more negatively than she plays out today. Then again, she, not John Pringle, is the main character/hero (and the one who gets the emotional journey).

[toujours_nigel]

The article is fascinating! Thank you.

[selenak]

You're welcome.

[moon_custafer]

I feel as though Wilder took the opportunity to recap parts of A Foreign Affair in the flashback scenes in Witness for the Prosecution of Dietrich and Tyrone Power’s first meeting.

[selenak]

In a way, though while Christine in Witness for the Prosecution might seem like a hardbitten survivor/femme fatale, the big twist is that she's actually doing all for love and her husband is the exploiter.

(In the case of Erika and John Pringle, I'd say neither is the dupe, because he knew exactly what he was getting when starting his affair with her.)

[sovay]

(Both the essay and the movie.) It's here.

I shall read it! I have seen A Foreign Affair; I loved it; neither rushthatspeaks nor I seemed able to find the kind of critical appraisal it deserved. This looks like it.

[selenak]

Have you seen the tv docu series Volker Schlöndorff shot about and with Billy Wilder? It's been years, but I seem to recall A Foreign Affair was well discussed. (It's bilingual, and the title an obvious homage the the Hitchcck/Truffaut thing: "Billy, how did you do it?/ Mr. Wilder, wie haben Sieie das gemacht?")

I had all of a minute of conversation with Billy Wilder on the phone when I was in Los Angeles in the mid-90s. I was trying to interview as many former exiles as I could, but he was already very sick by then and understandably was done with interviews.

[kore]

This is AMAZING, thank you!

[selenak]

You're welcome!

[watervole]

Dietrich is amazing. Her screen presence... And what an actress.

If you ever find the rest of that film, please tell me!

[selenak]

I just checked, and while Amazon UK lists the dvds (even a blue ray one), but says they're "currently unavailable", Amazon Germany sells them. I was all set to blame Brexit for this discrepancy (after all, we're both Region 2), but then I checked the details and it seems the German dvd on sale lacks the orignal soundtrack and only offers the dubbed version. Thus: alas. Currently unavailable.