A Foreign Affair
Tags: satire

Plot synopsis:
In 1947, a United States congressional committee which includes prim Phoebe Frost of Iowa (Jean Arthur) arrives in post-World War II Berlin to visit the American troops stationed there. Phoebe hears rumors that cabaret torch singer Erika von Schlütow (Marlene Dietrich), suspected of being the former mistress of either Hermann Göring or Joseph Goebbels, is being protected by an unidentified American officer. She enlists Captain John Pringle (John Lund), another Iowan, to assist in her investigation, unaware he is Erika's current lover.
After seeing Erika with Adolf Hitler in a newsreel filmed during the war, Phoebe asks John to take her to army headquarters after hours to retrieve the singer's official file. In order to distract her, John woos Phoebe, who initially resists his romantic advances but eventually succumbs to his charms.
Colonel Rufus J. Plummer (Millard Mitchell) advises John he is aware of his relationship with Erika and orders him to continue seeing her in the hope she will lead them to another of her ex-lovers, ex-Gestapo agent Hans Otto Birgel (Peter von Zerneck), believed to be hiding in the American occupation zone. Meanwhile, Erika and Phoebe are arrested during a raid designed to catch Germans without proper identification papers at the Lorelei, the nightclub where Erika performs. At the police station, Erika claims Phoebe as her cousin in order to secure her release.
Phoebe, grateful for Erika's intercession on her behalf, goes with her to her apartment, where Erika confesses that John is her lover just before he arrives. Humiliated, Phoebe leaves. Colonel Plummer attempts to reconcile Phoebe and John. John is targeted by a jealous and armed Birgel at the Lorelei, but Birgel is killed by American soldiers who shoot him first. Erika is arrested and sentenced to serve time in a labor camp, and Phoebe and John are reunited.

Review: In the opening scenes we see army captain John Lund at the black-market, selling a cake, hand-made by his American sweetheart and coming from the States, to buy a gift for his Berliner lover Marlene Dietrich.
A brilliant, cynical comedy about post-war Berlin goings on...black market, Army officers having affairs with notorious ex-Nazis, etc.It stars Marlene Dietrich (one of her all-time best performances), and amazing Jean Arthur (in one of her final films), and newcomer John Lund, who was rather wooden in later performances...here, he's terrific.Songs and musical score by Frederick Hollander...who's actually present playing piano.
The three songs Dietrich sings, "Black Market", "Illusions" and "Ruins of Berlin" are lyrically integral to the plot and represent three of best songs written for a non-musical film of the late 1940's.There's some serious plot points underneath the cynical comedy.Wish to heck Universal would open their vaults and release it on DVD in the US; thankfully it's available in the UK (get an all-region DVD player...I did!).It's an absolutely essential late 1940's comedy and in my opinion, one of Billy Wilder's best comedies.Remember....Wilder's next film was "Sunset Boulevard"..
She also sings "The Ruins of Berlin" and "Lovely Illusions." Jean Arthur is also good in one of her last films.
Jean Arthur, surely one of the greatest of all Hollywood comediennes, Marlene Dietrich in a part to match her Lola Lola in Blue Angel, John Lund a great under-utilized actor with the wit and ruggedness of Clark Gable and Millard Mitchell, one of those character actors whose mold was sadly broken decades ago.In my book this film ranks with Double Indemnity as the best work of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett.Great songs by the legendary Frederick Hollander who actually appears here as Dietrich's accompanist..
Jean Arthur is irresistible as the frustrated Congresswoman, throwing herself at John Lund with enthusiasm and gradually coming to see human behaviour in shades of grey, rather than black and white.John Lund is very good as the cynical army officer, attracted to Dietrich while repelled by her politics and prepared to romance Arthur in order to bury Dietrich's Nazi past.
Plus, it's history.Billy Wilder had a special relationship with Berlin, and, to be sure, with Germany, and his movies show how deep this understanding ran: "One,Two, Three" and "A Foreign Affair" are among the best films made on Berlin.
Although A Foreign Affair turned out to be a big success for all involved, biographies of Billy Wilder, Jean Arthur, and Marlene Dietrich all talk about the difficulties they had in this film.
It looks far better than the standard newsreel films that are often used as background for foreign locations.Marlene Dietrich plays the girlfriend of former Nazi bigwig Peter Von Zerneck who is presumed dead by the public at large, but the army knows is very much alive.
He decides to use the growing relationship that Captain John Lund has with Dietrich as Von Zerneck is the jealous type.But into the picture comes Jean Arthur, part of a group of visiting members of Congress touring occupied Berlin.
In one scene, she coyly admits her first name is "Phoebe," which happens to be the name of a character she played years earlier in a western called Arizona (1940).Wilder would revisit Berlin again in 1961 for the hilarious send-up One, Two, Three -- still a great favorite and indeed a classic film..
It is understandable that Billy Wilder did not want to make the milieu too bleak in order to dampen the comedy, but keep in mind that matters were far more brutal and squalid than portrayed here.It is a rather dark joke that Dietrich is cast in the role of a German woman who has had Nazi lovers and still feels loyal to Hitler.
I guess it takes someone like Billy Wilder, who returned with this film to a city where he once lived (and that he loved), to discover the comic effect of a "weight-challenged" GI with a bunch of flowers and a dachshund on the lead walking to his "Fräulein" through the ruins of a bombed-out street.
Less ingenious directors probably would have indulged in mourning and (self)-pity, which is exactly why many German movies from that immediate post-war time are unwatchable (unless you are fascinated by the morbid beauty of the ruins and rubble).As a German my only minor quibble with "A Foreign Affair" is the German dialogue (not the occasional "Strudel" and "Gesundheit" from the American actors, but the actual German by supporting actors and extras): in most cases it sounds embarrassingly dumb, even feebleminded.
And their logical conclusion is that, granted attractions back and forth, most people—despite regulations and even differences in language and politics—are likely to do toward one another that which comes naturally." That aspect is also memorably revealed in two of Ms Dietrich's famous songs: "Illusions" and "Black Market." The songs occur to manifest the romantic aspect of the movie but also 'its vagrant cynicism and its unmistakable point." (Crowther).Not much would be achieved if it weren't for the performances.
Billy Wilder returned to Berlin after the war to film part of "A Foreign Affair," starring Marlene Dietrich, Jean Arthur, and John Lund.
Wilder lived and worked in Berlin and, following his always excellent instincts, got out and came to America just in time.In the film, a group of government people arrive in Berlin to assess the morale of the 12,000 American soldiers still stationed there.
Dietrich is a gorgeous woman who survived by picking up with a high-ranking Nazi official, and she's kept out of a labor camp now thanks to the protection of an army officer named Pringle, played by John Lund.
Dietrich performs several numbers in her inimitable style, which is an added treat.This is Billy Wilder at his cynical best, with Pringle selling his birthday cake on the black market that Frost brings him from a constituent, and being slipped stockings for his girlfriend.
John Lund in probably his best performance plays a playboy Captain who is carrying out orders attempting to find Dietrich's Nazi boyfriend by courting Dietrich.Along comes a Congressional fact finding delegation of which Phoebe Frost represents a district in Iowa.
She meets two American privates that believe she is German and takes her to the night-club Lorelei, where the lead attraction is the singer Erika Von Schluetow (Marlene Dietrich), who is the secret mistress of Captain Pringle.
The officer seduces Frost to protect Erika and himself from martial court, but the jealous former lover of Erika, the Nazi Hans Otto Birgel (Peter von Zerneck), is seeking revenge against his competitor."A Foreign Affair" is a cynical, but naive and dated romantic comedy of the great director Billy Wilder.
The politicians are also not spared; the ruins of Berlin are also extremely painful to see; but there are funny moments alternating with others dramatic and great performances of Marlene Dietrich, Jean Arthur and John Lund.
The central threesome of Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich and John Lund put in excellent performances, which create the right mood for the piece and ensure that their characters are believable.
Jean Arthur plays congresswoman Phoebe Frost, whose last name tells a lot about her personality.She goes to Berlin to investigate G.I. morals.Her frosty personality is heated a little when she meets Captain John Pringle (John Lund).But she doesn't know he's the lover of the café singer Erika Von Schlütow (Marlene Dietrich), who's also the former mistress of a wanted war criminal.Billy Wilder, who else is behind this marvelous romantic comedy.A Foreign Affair (1948) has the best of actors.John Lund is terrific.Marlene Dietrich is, well, Marlene Dietrich.And she was also a top-notch singer.Jean Arthur is absolutely wonderful.I nearly fell in love with the character she plays, even though she's a Republican.I want you all to watch this classic and enjoy.There are awfully funny scenes there, like the one where Pringle wants to kiss Phoebe.Wilder really knew how to do it..
"Do you know what it was like to be a woman when the Russians came in?", Dietrich asks Arthur -- who has no idea.The three songs sung by Dietrich sort of sum up the subject of the film and it's not funny romance -- "The Black Market," "Illusions," and "The Ruins of Berlin." It's funny, though.
Billy Wilder was a very skilled narrator,and A Foreign Affair (1948) is homogeneous,compact,limpid and well-told,a jewel of agility,a movie unconventional,intelligent and masterly made.This delightful sex comedy,a tour De force, is one of Billy Wilder's best creations,and his output in the '40s is impressive and amazing:Double Indemnity,The Lost Weekend,concluding with Sunset Blvd..A Foreign Affair is an excellent sex comedy,very amusing,original and fresh.Wilder invests his sarcasm,his sardonic flair.It is obvious that he prepares for the womanizing John Lund the wild flower from Iowa,Mrs. Jean Arthur,and not the rottenness of a dashing and decadent German aristocratic charmer (Mrs. Marlene Dietrich).But Wilder has also the sense of making this a punishment for his John Lund,who is forced to exchange first class hedonism for an insipid Iowa idyll.The comic is natural, vigorous,perspicuous;it reminds,today, that Billy Wilder was one of the few great comic authors.When he made the Affair,15 years after his arrival in Hollywood,Wilder was 42;A Foreign Affair (1948) expresses well,and accurately,his mind,his thought,his conception,his fluid procedure,his taste for profligacy,cynicism,and the depiction of some debauchery,as incarnated,here,in Marlene Dietrich.But the conception itself,Wilder's understanding of the comedy,is what makes the Affair so pleasing.(In some recent first class comedies,like What Women Want (2000) ,where Mel Gibson gives a truly outstanding and lively performance,the lack of the director's aesthetic conception ,or of a powerful and daring instinct,makes itself felt.)The social world of A Foreign Affair (1948) is that of Germany Year Zero, 1946,but the contrast is obvious.Wilder's perspective is a lucid and libertine one ,his perspicuity is merciless.He vivisects;but the tone is temperate,mastered:nothing strident or vulgar.From Double Indemnity to The Fortune Cookie (and 4 more films followed,from '72 on,but a movie like The Front Page is a flop,a reject),Billy Wilder's road meant an amazing succession of hits.(In Germany,he was mostly a writer,for 5 years.)At 44 years,he gave his masterpiece:Sunset Blvd.;and if his career would have ended in '58,after Witness for the Prosecution,he would still be one of the greatest.There is a certain Billy Wilder texture,a certain flux,a delectable fluidity that make his films,Double Indemnity as well as The Lost Weekend,A Foreign Affair,Sunset Blvd.,Love in the Afternoon so easily recognizable;this plastic makes Wilder one of the most skilled artists of the black and white cinema.He felt,he felt the depth of the black and white plastic.After Some Like It Hot,he made 6 more films with Jack Lemmon.But a flick like A Foreign Affair shows that he was already interested in sex comedies even before his string of comic movies that began in the '50s.Wilder was enormously gifted.Mrs. Marlene Dietrich is once again an astute,light-some woman,the mere embodiment of licentiousness, vice, depravity, sin,heathenism,as in The Scarlet Empress (1934),Martin Roumagnac (1946), Touch of Evil (1958),etc.,etc..Marlene Dietrich was a woman of breathtaking, luminous, sensuous,astounding beauty.She was most attractive in her 40s and 50s,as the screen shows her in A Foreign Affair (1948) and in Touch of Evil (1958),a slightly elder Marlene Dietrich far more attractive,prepossessing and stunning than she was in her prime;her carnation was shiny.
This beautiful woman was larger than life.The comic scenes of A Foreign Affair (1948) are spontaneous,fluid,they have precision,keenness,verve,an admirable pace,and there is no ballast.The movie is about the ruining of the sensual life of an American officer in the postwar Germany.The merry love life of the American military in Berlin is threatened by a congress woman.This film expresses Wilder's strong conception of the cinema,and his exact understanding of the nature of the movies.Certainly one of the best ten '48 movies,as it rises to very amusing heights.It has to offer a work that is representative for the director,and that contains one of Mrs. Dietrich's finest roles.A word about Mrs. Jean Arthur.She might have been 40,43 or even 48 years when she made this picture.A Foreign Affair (1948) was her penultimate feature movie.She knew how to look provincial,naive and hot;she is,of course,compelling right from the start,but the viewer is supposed to disagree.Her portrayal is fresh,camp and endearing.It was a challenge to team up these two actresses,Jean Arthur and Marlene Dietrich,that are both very appetizing,but in most dissimilar ways,and,strangely,this it just what makes them so compatible.Mrs. D.
Director Billy Wilder also co-wrote this post-WWII comedy (along with producer Charles Brackett) involving a prim, humorless Congresswoman policing American troops stationed in Occupied Berlin, finding little but celebrations and skirt-chasing from the randy soldiers.
As Arthur probes into Dietrich, Lund tries to run interference by getting involved with her romantically, thus setting up a love triangle.There are many great things about the film, starting with the footage of Berlin, which was still absolutely devastated by the war.
I thought the balance was good, and frankly pretty amazing considering director Billy Wilder was Jewish, and lived in Austria and Germany until leaving for Hollywood at 27 in 1933.Marlene Dietrich is iconic, and as a German-American who had to be convinced to take the part of a Nazi collaborator since the idea was so repugnant to her, her performance is filled with soul and depth.
The situation she ends up in following a raid of the cabaret is contrived, though how the love triangle plays out is reasonably good, and Arthur delivers in her somber moments.Overall, a film that gives you post-war Berlin, Dietrich singing in a smoky cabaret, and some food for thought.
Billy Wilder's romance-triangle comedy is set in the Allied-occupied Berlin in 1947, in the face of Hollywood's entrenched agism and sexism, A FOREIGN AFFAIR is bracingly headlined by two 40-plus female marquee players, Jean Arthur (in her penultimate picture) and Marlene Dietrich, in roles which cagily keep their real ages under wraps.
Arthur plays a prudish American congresswoman Phoebe Frost of Iowa, scandalized by the dissipation she witnesses of American soldiers in the rubble strewn city, she is headstrong in making an example by finding out the American officer who is clandestinely protecting a German torch singer Erika von Schlutow (Dietrich), a woman with a Nazi past.
The women steal the honours in this film about a soldier John Pringle (John Lund)who has a lover Erika (Marlene Dietrich) in Germany but falls for a Congresswoman Phoebe (Jean Arthur) who is on a 5-day stay in Berlin investigating morale and morals within the US army.
Billy Wilder obviously had a cynical point of view in mind when he directed A FOREIGN AFFAIR and cast JEAN ARTHUR, MARLENE DIETRICH and JOHN LUND in the leads for a story about an American congresswoman (Arthur) investigating conditions for GIs in post-WWII Berlin.The rather bleak atmosphere seems to work against the material at times, but the script is witty enough to overcome any such distractions after awhile.
He's more than able to share the limelight with the female stars and has enough masculine presence and likability to carry the day.The story has staid Arthur discovering that she's falling in love with Lund, while at the same time aware that he's been courting a German nightclub singer--so that things get a little heated before they're straightened out for a happy ending.Summing up: The Charles Brackett script proves that the Brackett/Wilder combination was something to deal with..
Dietrich is perfect in the role, beautiful and talented as usual, but a manipulative whore is hardly a likable character.Jean Arthur plays Ms. Frost (the name says it all) a frigid congresswoman investigating how the US troops behave in occupied Germany.
At one point in the film, Erika tells Phoebe to accompany her home, "It's the next ruin", she explains."A Foreign Affair" is one of Mr. Wilder's best achievements as he gives us an account of the city he knew well..
Jean Arthur excels as uptight Congresswoman Phoebe Frost, carefully finishing off a report before taking a look at Berlin from the air - reminding us of a previous character written by Wilder, Garbo's Ninotchka, who failed to be impressed by Paris initially.
Shot amidst the bombed out ruins of postwar Berlin, Billy Wilder's "A Foreign Affair" positions us to sympathise with Erika Von Schluetow (Marlene Dietrich), a German glamour queen who may or may not have once worked with the German War Office.
These parts of the film were done on location.The plot, such as it is, has John Lund (Capt Pringle) romancing Erika (Dietrich) not knowing he is being set up a a target to bring her Nazi ex-boyfriend out of hiding.
That is because of the early plot.Congresswoman Phoebe (Jean Arthur) and a congressional group come to check out the morale of our American troops staying in Germany after the war.
This makes little sense historically as the Russians had just raped most of the German women in Berlin in 1945, but because there is a shortage of German men after the war, I guess we can stretch with that.Lund and Arthur really fall into love, but Pringle (Lund) has to stay on his mission with Dietrich (Erika).
An essential Billy Wilder film starring Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich and John Lund.
Directed by Billy Wilder, with a screenplay he co-wrote with Charles Brackett and Richard Breen (adapted by Robert Harari) that was based on David Shaw's story, this essential comedy drama romance stars Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, and John Lund.
Berlin, 1948, the titular foreign affair may be Captain Pringle's (John Lund) fraternisation with German chanteuse and former companion to Nazi brass Erika Von Schluetow (Marlene Dietrich ), or his wooing of visiting U.S. Congresswoman Phoebe Frost (Jean Arther) (or both) or, more broadly, the ever-present canoodling between US serviceman and the local fräuleins.
John Lund is quite good as the Lothario trying to play two hands at once (although there is more going on than meets the eye), Arthur is OK (although a little goofy at times, especially when she is supposed to be drunk), Millard Mitchell is great as the Colonel in charge of shepherding the members of congress around while dealing with the complexities of occupation and of locating high-ranking Nazis hiding out in the city, but the real star is Dietrich.