Berlín Occidente

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. Especially Wilder and Arthur.

Paramount put up some big bucks for this film, even including sending Billy Wilder and a second unit team to film the surviving city of Berlin from World War II. It all paid off quite nicely and you can bet the footage found it's way into films not half as good. 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. How to smoke him out is the problem that Colonel Millard Mitchell of the occupying forces has. 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. Arthur departs from the group and starts conducting her own investigations and in the way Joseph Cotten was doing in occupied Vienna in The Third Man blundering his way into an investigation in the British sector there, Arthur threatens to blow up all of Mitchell's plans. Especially since Lund is starting to switch gears and drop Marlene for Jean.

Dietrich comes out best in this film. Not only was she German, but she was born and grew up in Berlin. Marlene may have invested more of herself in her character of Erika Von Schluetow than in any other film she did. She gets three great original songs by Frederick Hollander, Black Market, Illusions, and The Ruins Of Berlin that speak not to just her character, but to the sullen character of a beaten people. By the way that's composer Hollander himself accompanying her at the piano.

Dietrich and Wilder got along just great, both being refugees from Nazism. They got along so good that Arthur felt she was being frozen out and Wilder was favoring Dietrich.

Both Frank Capra and Cecil B. DeMille spoke of the difficulties in working with Jean Arthur and Billy Wilder also echoes what his colleagues said in their memoirs. Arthur was a terribly insecure person and it took a lot of patience to work with her. The results were usually worth it to the movie going public, but for her fellow workers on the film it could be painful. A Foreign Affair may have been good training for Wilder when he later had to get performances out of another diva, Marilyn Monroe.

Wilder came in for a lot of criticism showing our occupying forces in a less than perfect light and also making fun of a member of Congress and a Republican at that as Jean was in the film, most definitely not in real life. Millard Mitchell's a smart and tough professional soldier, but he's a bit of fathead as well as extols the virtue of teaching German youth baseball as a method of deNazification. As if it were that simple. But A Foreign Affair has held up very well over 60 years now and is Billy Wilder at some of his satirical and cynical best.

Billy Wilder goes back to Berlin after the war and doesn't like it much. If you're expecting a capricious romantic comedy, you won't find it here.

Jean Arthur is an uptight Congresswoman from Iowa investigating conditions in the bare ruined choirs of Berlin. The Colonel in charge of wrangling the Congressional committee is Millard Mitchell. He hands the committee members, Arthur included, a piece of boilerplate about how we are teaching the Germans about democracy and baseball. "We teach them that if they steal anything it must be second base." It's all working out very well, if only they can get those damned kids to stop drawing swastikas every place they go.

The occupation army isn't much better. It's 1948 and the Russians haven't yet become "real shifty" as they would in Wilder's "One, Two, Three," which appeared twelve years later, although even here they are pretty ugly, dumb, and given to vodka. At the climax, with a dead body on the floor, the night club is empty except for a couple of MPs and four Russians at one of the tables singing the Volga Boatman. But the American troops are taking advantage of the down-and-out Berliners as well, swapping chocolate bars and nylons for more tawdry treats. The Berliners, if they've learned nothing else, have learned the arts of survival under stress and they're very cooperative. Congresswoman Arthur notices how friendly the soldiers and Frauleins are and is perturbed.

It develops that two of the major players in this illicit system are an Army Capitain, John Lund, and a nightclub singer, Marlene Dietrich. They swap favors almost every night. Of course, Lund must wind up shepherding Arthur around and they fall in love. Dietrich is jealous about the fading interest of her meal ticket, but the two women know nothing of each other. It's just that their common interest is switching his affection from one to the other.

The script by the patrician Charles Brackett and the Jewish refugee Billy Wilder crackles with subversive wit. Nobody comes out looking spotless. Human weaknesses and strengths abound -- mostly weaknesses. The plot changes as it moves along, from mostly funny to mostly dramatic and sad. When she finds out about her man's treachery, Arthur's sadness is palpable, helped along by the photography of Charles Lang, who manages to capture convincingly the wreck that the German capital has now become. People live in piles of rubble, and the script gives them a little humanity. "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. There are some good gags and amusing situations. But Billy Wilder lost his mother and some of his other family in the Nazi's genocide program, and the wisecracks seem to come out of some dark shadowy corner. It's hard to imagine how it could have been otherwise. His father's grave was buried under a heap of rubble and, when he arrived in Berlin, there were still thousands of putrefying corpses buried under the collapsed bricks.

Why is this film less known than "Casablanca" or "The Third Man"? Maybe it's because many see it as "just" a comedy, which these people consider a "lesser" art-form. In my opinion they miss that the brilliant screenplay just smoothes out the edges and puts some very sharp and witty dialogue on a plot and setting, which is actually very "noir"ish at heart. 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. Apart from one scene that has the same level of cynicism as the English dialogue (the choleric policeman asking "You live? Do you have permission?" after the "Lorelei" round-up), only Marlene Dietrich is allowed to talk normally.

Otherwise it's one of Billy Wilder's best films (which is synonymous with being one of the best films of all time). Unfortunately you don't get characters like Captain Renault ("Casablanca"), Major Calloway ("The Third Man") or Colonel Plummer ("A Foreign Affair") anymore in contemporary films. A pity!

in this excellent and underrated Billy Wilder film. Dietrich plays a former Nazi trying to hide behind a post-war American boyfriend. Jean Arthur plays a spinster American congresswoman, and John Lund is the man they both fall for. The scenes of bombed-out Berlin are astonishing, and the 3 stars are wonderful in this sly comedy that gets better with every viewing. The highlights tho are Dietrich's musical numbers sung in a basement speakeasy. She sings the great "Black Market" with composer Frederick Hollander at the piano. She sings LIVE and it's electrifying. She also sings "The Ruins of Berlin" and "Lovely Illusions." Jean Arthur is also good in one of her last films. Millard Mitchell, Bill Murphy, Stanley Prager, and Gordon Jones co-star. A must!

This is a well written (Brackett and Breen) and directed (Billy Wilder) film with great performances. Marlene Dietrich is impressive as the Nazi chanteuse with loose morals, great legs and an eye for the main chance. Her songs e.g. Ruins of Berlin are sardonic and compelling. 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. He has a nice way with underplayed humour e.g. "It can't be subversive to kiss a Republican!" Supporting actors, especially Millard Mitchell as Col Plummer are all good.

Berlin makes a bleak impressive backdrop, making the behaviour of the occupying troops and the Berliners easy to understand. There are some lovely vignettes e.g. the German woman pushing a pram decorated with the US flag.

Unfortunately the film was perceived as unpatriotic by many critics and did not do as much for the career of John Lund as it should.