The film is about a United States Army captain in post-World War II Berlin, occupied by the Allies during the early days of the Cold War, who is torn between a former Nazi cafe singer and the American congresswoman investigating her. Though a comedy, the film has a serious and cynical political tone, attesting to the fascination of both Wilder and American audiences with the multiple legacies of Berlin.[4]
Plot
In 1947 in post-World War IIBerlin, prim Iowa congresswoman Phoebe Frost arrives with a congressional committee on a fact-finding mission to investigate the morale of American occupation troops reportedly infected by a "moral malaria." Corruption runs rampant, with troops taking advantage of supply shortages to gain profit as well as privileges from local women. Military officials defend the behavior of the troops.
Phoebe arrives with a birthday cake for a constituent’s boyfriend, captain John Pringle. He trades the cake on the black market for a mattress for his lover, Erika von Schlütow. MPs arrive to question Erika, who had been ordered to a labor camp for brickwork but has instead been working in a nightclub, protected by her relationship with Pringle. The MPs order Erika to report to the denazification office, but Pringle sends them away.
On a tour of bomb-ravaged Berlin, Phoebe notices how many American soldiers fraternize with local women. When Phoebe is mistaken for a local by two American soldiers, she pretends to speak only broken English and accompanies them to the Club Lorelei. There she sees cabarettorch singer Erika von Schlütow, who is rumored to be the former mistress of either Hermann Göring or Joseph Goebbels. Phoebe enlists Captain Pringle to assist in her investigation of Erika, unaware that 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 to retrieve Erika's official file. To distract her, John woos Phoebe, who initially resists his advances but eventually succumbs. Erika questions why John not been seeing her lately. John replies that he had not realized the depth of her involvement with Nazi officials. When Erika mocks him, he responds coldly and departs. John and Phoebe visit Club Lorelei, where Erika joins their table and needles Phoebe.
Colonel Plummer orders John to continue seeing Erika to serve as bait for Hans Otto Birgel, a former Gestapo agent believed to be hiding in the American occupation zone. A letter has been intercepted in which the jealous agent has threatened to kill Erika’s new lover.
Erika and Phoebe are arrested during a raid at the club designed to catch Germans lacking identification papers. At the police station, Erika claims that Phoebe is her cousin in order to secure her release without revealing her identity, avoiding scandal. At Erika’s apartment, Erika explains that Phoebe is in her debt and owes her John, her protector. When John arrives, Phoebe, who is out of his line of sight, sees John kissing Erika and leaves humiliated.
At the military airport waiting for departure, Phoebe tells Plummer that she will not be filing her report, as she feels ethically compromised. Plummer discloses that John has been following orders all along to use Erika to lead them to Birgel and now has a target on his back. Plummer tells Phoebe that John’s feelings for her have complicated matters.
Birgel appears at the club to shoot John, but Birgel is shot first by American soldiers. Erika is arrested for her complicity with Birgel. Phoebe and John are finally united.
While serving with the United States Army in Germany during World War II, Billy Wilder was promised government assistance if he made a film about Allied-occupied Germany, and he took advantage of the offer by developing A Foreign Affair with Charles Brackett and Richard L. Breen. Erich Pommer, who was responsible for the rebuilding of the German film industry, placed what was left of the facilities at Universum Film AG at Wilder's disposal. While researching the existing situation for his screenplay, he interviewed many of the American military personnel stationed in Berlin, as well as its residents, many of whom were having difficulty dealing with the destruction of the city.[5]
Marlene Dietrich was Wilder's first choice to play Erika, and Friedrich Hollaender already had written three songs—"Black Market", "Illusions" and "The Ruins of Berlin"—for her to sing in the film. Wilder feared that Dietrich would not portray a Nazi collaborator, but he was able to convince her.[5] In the film, Dietrich appears in two gowns designed by Irene that she had worn while entertaining American troops during the war.[6]
Wilder persuaded Jean Arthur, who was attending college, to leave her retirement to play Phoebe. Throughout filming, Arthur felt that Wilder favored Dietrich.[5] After the film, Arthur signed a 12-year, four-picture deal with Paramount.[7]
Location shooting, much of which occurred in the Soviet occupation zone, began in August 1947, and filming continued at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood between December 1947 and February 1948. The film was edited within a week after principal photography was completed, and it premiered at the Paramount Theatre in New York City on June 30, 1948, shortly after Wilder's The Emperor Waltz opened at Radio City Music Hall.[5]
Release
The film's world premiere was held at the Paramount Theatre in New York on June 30, 1948.[8]
Reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther called A Foreign Affair "a dandy entertainment which has some shrewd and realistic things to say" and wrote:
Maybe you think there's nothing funny about the current situation of American troops in the ticklish area of Berlin. And it's serious enough, heaven knows, what with the Russians pushing and shoving and the natives putting on their own type squeeze. But, at least, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder have been happily disinclined to wax morose about the problems presented by occupation—and by "fraternization," specifically. Rather these two bright filmmakers have been wryly disposed to smile upon the conflicts in self and national interests which proximities inevitably provoke. ... Particularly, their interest is in how human beings behave when confronted by other human beings—especially those of the opposite sex. 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.[1]
Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "'A Foreign Affair' can take a terrific bow for mixing politics, romance and postwar intrigue. This comedy, with dramatic overtones ... is the best topical film show that has arrived in months."[2]
A Foreign Affair has been released in various home-video formats. On November 27, 2006, the film was released as part of the 18-film Marlene Dietrich: The Movie Collection for the UK market.[10] However, in April 2007, Dietrich's estate obtained an injunction that forced Universal Pictures to withdraw the DVD set because of an alleged contract breach.[11][12]
In 2012, Universal, through TCM, released the two-DVD set Directed by Billy Wilder featuring Five Graves to Cairo and A Foreign Affair.
Billy Wilder was an American filmmaker and screenwriter. He was born in Sucha Beskidzka, Poland, a town in Austria-Hungary at the time of his birth. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He received seven Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and two Golden Globe Awards.
Double Indemnity is a 1944 American film noir directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. Wilder and Raymond Chandler adapted the screenplay from James M. Cain's novel of the same name, which ran as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine in 1936.
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett. It is named after a major street that runs through Hollywood.
Witness for the Prosecution is a 1957 American legal mystery thriller film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, and Elsa Lanchester. The film, which has elements of bleak black comedy and film noir, is a courtroom drama set in the Old Bailey in London and is based on the 1953 play of the same name by Agatha Christie. The first film adaptation of Christie's story, Witness for the Prosecution was adapted for the screen by Larry Marcus, Harry Kurnitz, and Wilder. The film was acclaimed by critics and received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. It also received five Golden Globes nominations including a win for Elsa Lanchester as Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Additionally, the film was selected as the sixth-best courtroom drama ever by the American Film Institute for their AFI's 10 Top 10 list.
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich was a German-born American actress and singer whose career spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s.
Millard Mitchell was a Cuban-born American character actor whose credits include roughly 30 feature films and two television appearances.
Charles William Brackett was an American screenwriter and film producer. He collaborated with Billy Wilder on sixteen films.
The Emperor Waltz is a 1948 American musical film directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine. Written by Wilder and Charles Brackett, the film is about a brash American gramophone salesman in Austria at the turn of the twentieth century who tries to convince Emperor Franz Joseph to buy a gramophone so the product will gain favor with the Austrian people. The Emperor Waltz was inspired by a real-life incident involving Franz Joseph I of Austria. Filmed in Jasper National Park in Canada, the picture premiered in London, Los Angeles, and New York in the spring of 1948, and was officially released in the United States July 2, 1948. In 1949, the film received Academy Award nominations for Best Costume Design and Best Music, as well as a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Written American Musical.
Friedrich Hollaender was a German film composer and author.
John Lund was an American film, stage, and radio actor who is probably best remembered for his role in the film A Foreign Affair (1948) and a dual role in To Each His Own (1946).
Billy Wilder (1906–2002) was an Austrian filmmaker. Wilder initially pursued a career in journalism after being inspired by an American newsreel. He worked for the Austrian magazine Die Bühne and the newspaper Die Stunde in Vienna, and later for the German newspapers Berliner Nachtausgabe, and Berliner Börsen-Courier in Berlin. His first screenplay was for the German silent thriller The Daredevil Reporter (1929). Wilder fled to Paris in 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party, where he co-directed and co-wrote the screenplay of French drama Mauvaise Graine (1934). In the same year, Wilder left France on board the RMS Aquitania to work in Hollywood despite having little knowledge of English.
Dishonored is a 1931 American pre-Code romantic spy film directed and edited by Josef von Sternberg, who also co-wrote the film with Daniel N. Rubin. It was produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film stars Marlene Dietrich, Victor McLaglen, Gustav von Seyffertitz, and Warner Oland, and follows a female spy (Dietrich) for Austria-Hungary during World War I. Costume design was provided by Travis Banton, in one of his several collaborations with Dietrich.
Richard Ryen was a Hungarian-born actor who was expelled from Germany by the Nazis prior to World War II.
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife is a 1938 Paramount Pictures American romantic comedy film directed and produced by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper. The film is based on the 1921 French play La huitième femme de Barbe-Bleue by Alfred Savoir and the English translation of the play by Charlton Andrews. The screenplay was the first of many collaborations between Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. The film is a remake of the 1923 silent version directed by Sam Wood and starring Gloria Swanson.
Christiane Schmidtmer was a German actress, fashion model, nude model, and memoirist.
Martin Kosleck was a German film actor. Like many other German actors, he fled when the Nazis came to power. Inspired by his deep hatred of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Kosleck made a career in Hollywood playing villainous Nazis in films.
Marlene Dietrich was a German and American actress and singer.
Max Colpet was an American writer, scriptwriter and lyricist of Russian-German descent.
Maria Elisabeth Riva is a German-born American actress. She worked on television at CBS in the 1950s. She is the daughter of actress Marlene Dietrich, about whom she published a memoir in 1992.
20th Century Blues is a live 1996 album by English singer Marianne Faithfull, in collaboration with pianist Paul Trueblood.
References
1 2 3 Crowther, Bosley (1948-07-01). "The Screen: Two Attractions in Local Premieres". The New York Times. p.19.
1 2 3 Schallert, Edwin (1948-07-23). "'Foreign Affair' Cynical, Brilliant Postwar Comedy". Los Angeles Times. p.14.
Smedley, Nick (2011). A Divided World: Hollywood Cinema and Emigré Directors in the Era of Roosevelt and Hitler, 1933–1948. Bristol, UK: Intellect. pp.218–223. ISBN978-1-84150-402-5. LCCN2010041838.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
