Synopsis
"A Foreign Affair" is a funny affair!
In occupied Berlin, a US Army Captain is torn between an ex-Nazi cafe singer and the US Congresswoman investigating her.
A Foreign Affair
Cast
Jean Arthur Marlene Dietrich John Lund Millard Mitchell Peter von Zerneck Stanley Prager William Murphy Gordon Jones Freddie Steele Raymond Bond Boyd Davis Robert Malcolm Charles Meredith Michael Raffetto James Larmore Damian O'Flynn Frank Fenton Harland Tucker George M. Carleton Nick Abramoff Ted Cottle Zina Dennis Jimmie Dundee Lisa Golm Leo Gregory Ilka Grüning Vilmos Gymes Chester Hayes Hans Herbert Show All…
Director
Producers
Writers
Original Writer
Editor
Cinematography
Assistant Directors
Art Direction
Set Decoration
Special Effects
Visual Effects
Composer
Sound
Costume Design
Makeup
Studio
Country
Primary Language
Spoken Languages
Alternative Titles
La mundana, Чуждeстранна афера, Det hændte i Berlin, Berliinin raunioiden keskellä, Floga kai pathos, Külügyi szívügyek, Een avontuur in Berlijn, Moralens vokter, Sprawa zagraniczna, A Sua Melhor Missão, Scandal international, Ljubezen na tujem, Günahsiz melek, Escándalo internacional, いこくのできごと, La Scandaleuse de Berlin, Scandalo internazionale, Berlín Occidente, Eine auswärtige Affäre, Det hände i Berlin, A Mundana, יחסי חוץ, Зарубежный роман, 柏林艳史, Külügyi szívügyek (Külkapcsolat), 외교 문제, 異国の出来事
Genres
Themes
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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USANR
24 Dec 1949
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Italy
Physical
14 Aug 2008
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Netherlands6
10 Jun 2013
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USANR
22 Jan 2014
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Netherlands6
06 Aug 2019
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USANR
Releases by Country
Italy
24 Dec 1949
- Theatrical
Netherlands
14 Aug 2008
- Physical6 DVD
22 Jan 2014
- Physical6 Blu ray
USA
20 Aug 1948
- TheatricalNR
10 Jun 2013
- PhysicalNR DVD, Universal Studios
06 Aug 2019
- PhysicalNR Blu-ray, Kino Lorber
Popular reviews
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"If you give a hungry man a loaf of bread, that's democracy. If you leave the wrapper on, that's imperialism!"
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A Foreign Affair is the rare Golden Age movie you cannot take at face value. It is nothing like what it appears to be on the outside, much less what the awful synopsis on Letterboxd indicates. Billy Wilder molded a wittily painful, comic-tragic story into one ingenious whole, fusing two genres seamlessly. He placed two actresses dissimilar in style (but definitely in a league of their own) at the symbolic gist of his two intertwining stories, and spread out his yarn according to the two mindsets, two outlooks on life they personified on the bilateral scale of post-WW2 reality: Jean Arthur epitomizing the American dream, the naive hopefulness and ever-blooming positivity of life, Marlene Dietrich the oh-so-European realism, tinged with…
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Action! - Three Auteurs: The Witty and Eclectic Mr. Wilder
Another good entry in Billy Wilder's series of romantic comedies, directed and co-written by him, and much of the appeal for me was the premise of the story, which in this case is not particularly original, but it was the little mystery and dose of suspense that drew me in.
The performances are good, especially Jean Arthur's, who does a terrific job delivering the charming humour and has a solid chemistry with John. To no one's surprise, it is Marlene Dietrich who takes the spotlight by her presence alone. She's great every time she's on screen, she’s commendable.
Technically, Wilder's direction is once again great. However, it is Charles Lang's…
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Between the legends of “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Lost Weekend” is stuffed “Foreign Affair;” a forgotten gem in the ornate jewellery box of Billy Wilder’s career.
“Affair,” a film Wilder promised to make at the behest of the US Army, captures a flashpoint of the director’s early romantic comedy tapered through the lens of his several-year descent into the noir genre.
Wilder could play the happy clown and the sadistic lion-tamer at will. The harmony between his two natures was perfected in later works such as “The Apartment” and “Witness for the Prosecution.” But with “Affair,” it seems it a trick he was always capable of pulling.
A romance set amidst the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, “Affair” is fertile material for…
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jean arthur and marlene dietrich come this 👌🏻 close to kissing and it nearly killed me. if only john lund wasn’t a mustachioed creep this movie could really be something special.
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You know what, this might just be my favourite Jean Arthur performance. I mean, it’s not every day you get to see her champagne drunk, throat croaking-err- singing her Midwestern little heart out about her hometown Iowa to a packed Berlin black market nightclub as she’s egged on by one Marlene Dietrich.
It’s also one of the sharpest, most quick-witted wartime satires this side of Strangelove. Cynical and sarcastic in its ironies, yet the account here is nobly told with authentic magnanimity, this Germany one of pitiful people struggling to survive rather than that of a cruel enemy to hate.
It’s also in serious contention for the directors most visually striking. Beneath the rubble and destruction of it’s broken…
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100-word review: U.S. congresswoman Frost evaluates her country's troops in occupied Berlin. She begins an investigation into ex-Nazi Von Schlütow, who she suspects of being protected by a ranking officer. Wilder has lots of fun with reversals here: Von Schlütow playing the same tricks on Pringle as Pringle on Frost, but also that final scene, wherein Frost corners Pringle pulling chairs left and right to do so, mirroring an earlier scene wherein Frost did the same to her pulling drawers from cabinets in a fileroom. Frost starts off somewhat one-dimensional, but completely won me over as the film progressed.
Congressman Pennecot: "If you give a hungry man a loaf of bread, that's democracy, if you leave the wrapper on, that's imperialism."
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BILLY! SIR! you could have cast joel mccrea in john lund's part and changed his name so it wasn't captain johnny pringle and this could have been so GOOD! SIR! instead of john lund, king of having a crooked mustache and no sex appeal, you could have had alluring body language icon joel being ALL sensuality and NO creepiness! and we could have seen joel mccrea onscreen with marlene dietrich which would have been SO sexy! what the fuck!
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Billy Wilder's post war romantic comedy is all about the setting. A Foreign Affair takes place in bombed out Berlin following the end of World War Two. We focus on an army captain (John Lund) who becomes torn between two women - a former Nazi turned nightclub singer (Marlene Dietrich) and a Republican congresswoman (Jean Arthur) there to investigate army morale. The scene that introduces Dietrich is fairly typical - except for the fact that her apartment is basically a ruin. Berlin is presented as a shattered city; the locals trying to step out of the shadow of Nazism, with the sensibilities of the two central nations (Germany and USA) portrayed through the two actresses. The romantic comedy situation is…
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If I had a single criticism of A Foreign Affair it would be that the truly humbling sight of its setting completely dwarfs the weight of its script. Shot in the bombed out ruins of Berlin in 1947 not long after the end of The Second World War. The result of close to 400 Allied bombing raids had left a landscape of jaw dropping devastation and that was after two years of tidying up. A love triangle comedy with a fairly predictable plot progression feels way too light, even if the whole film has a cynical undercurrent throughout.
Jean Arthur came out of retirement to play Phoebe Frost, an idealistic Iowa Congresswoman who after landing in post-war Berlin begins an…
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