A FOREIGN AFFAIR (1948)

Cynical & deadly serious, Billy Wilder’s political comedy about a righteous US Congressional delegation on a fact-finding tour in post-WWII Berlin, doesn’t get the attention it deserves.* And with front-loaded comic action, the drama just gets stronger as it calculates the pluses & minuses of corruption, social & political. Jean Arthur, in her penultimate film after a four-year break, is there as Iowa’s Congresswoman, a prim spinster with MidWest puritanical morals as unyielding as her tightly braided coif (a nod at Clair Booth Luce), chaffing at lax moral standards till she takes a fall of her own with two-timing Captain John Lund, a fellow Iowan mixed up with Marlene Dietrich’s sexual opportunist, a nightclub entertainer happy to play whatever chain-of-command is currently in power for protection & personal comfort. (BTW, that’s composer Friedrich Hollaender at the piano accompanying on his songs.) Overseeing this human comedy of love & provisions is Millard Mitchell, in his best role, as a Colonel-Knows-Best officer gently pulling the strings without letting on. Superbly plotted and phenomenally well-shot by Charles Lang (bombed out Berlin never looked worse/Marlene rarely so good in her later pics), the film was wise to many ideas before its time, shocking in its lighthearted amorality. Wilder, who served on Occupation de-Nazification Boards, knew what he was talking about, finding the wounding comic tone his beloved Ernst Lubitsch ignited in TO BE OR NOT TO BE/’41. (And look for a Lubitsch Touch worthy of the master involving seduction by file cabinet.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Perhaps undervalued because third lead John Lund, well-cast & very good pivoting from Dietrich’s corrupt allure to Arthur’s reluctance, is too shy on star wattage to properly compete. For comparison, see how John Hodiak makes out against Tallulah Bankhead in Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT/’44.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Long time partner/co-writer/producer Charles Brackett hated the film’s bitter edge & lack of uplift, splitting with Wilder after similar objections on SUNSET BOULEVARD/’50. Hard to believe that Gloria Swanson, that film’s pathetic silent film has-been, was a mere two years older than Marlene and just one year older than Jean Arthur.