Love in the Afternoon (1957 film)
Encyclopedia
Love in the Afternoon is a 1957 American romantic comedy film
Romantic comedy film
Romantic comedy films are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles. One dictionary definition is "a funny movie, play, or television program about a love story that ends happily"...

 produced and directed by Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...

. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on the Claude Anet novel Ariane, jeune fille russe
Ariane, jeune fille russe (novel)
Ariane, jeune fille russe is a 1920 novel by the French writer Claude Anet. It follows a young Russian woman who encounters Don Juan and falls in love with him.-Adaptations:...

(trans., Ariane, Russian Girl), which previously was filmed as Scampolo in 1928 and Scampolo, ein Kind der Strasse (trans., Scampolo, a Child of the Street) in 1932, the latter with a script co-written by Wilder. Wilder was inspired by a 1931 German adaptation of the novel Ariane
Ariane (film)
Ariane is a 1931 German drama film directed by Paul Czinner and starring Elisabeth Bergner, Rudolf Forster and Annemarie Steinsieck. It is an adaptation of the 1920 French novel Ariane, jeune fille russe by Claude Anet. Two alternative language versions The Loves of Ariane and Ariane, jeune fille...

directed by Paul Czinner
Paul Czinner
Paul Czinner was a writer, film director, and producer.Czinner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary. After studying literature and philosophy at the University of Vienna, he worked as a journalist. From 1919 onward, he dedicated himself to work for the filming industry as writer, director and...

.

Plot

Young French cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

 student Ariane Chavasse eavesdrops on a conversation between her father, widowed private detective Claude Chavasse, and his client, "Monsieur X". After learning of his wife's daily trysts with American business magnate
Business magnate
A business magnate, sometimes referred to as a capitalist, czar, mogul, tycoon, baron, oligarch, or industrialist, is an informal term used to refer to an entrepreneur who has reached prominence and derived a notable amount of wealth from a particular industry .-Etymology:The word magnate itself...

 Frank Flannagan, Monsieur X announces he will shoot Flannagan later that day. Claude is nonchalant, regretting only the business he will lose (Flannagan is a well-known international playboy with a long history of numerous casual affairs). When Ariane cannot get the police to intervene (until after a crime has been committed), she decides to warn him herself.

Ariane is in time. When Monsieur X breaks into Flannagan's hotel suite, he finds Flannagan with Ariane, not his wife (she is cautiously making her escape via an outside ledge). Flannagan is intrigued by the mysterious girl, who refuses to give him any information about herself, even her name. He resorts to calling her "thin girl". She has no romantic history but pretends to be a femme fatale
Femme fatale
A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art...

 to interest him, and soon falls in love with the considerably older man. She agrees to meet him the next afternoon, because her orchestral practice is in the evenings (although she does not admit that is the reason). She comes with mixed feelings, but ends up becoming his lover for the evening until his plane leaves.

Her father, who has tried unsuccessfully to protect her from knowing about the tawdry domestic-surveillance details in his files, notices her change of mood but has no idea that it proceeds from one of his cases.

After a year, Flannagan returns to Paris. The two meet by chance at an opera, and start seeing each other again. This time, when he persists in his questioning, she makes up a long list of prior imaginary lovers based on her father's files (Flannagan is number 20 on the list). Flannagan gradually goes from being amused to being tormented by the possible comparisons, but is unsure whether they are real. When he encounters a still-apologetic Monsieur X, the latter recommends Claude Chavasse to him, and thus Flannagan hires Ariane's own father to investigate. It does not take Chavasse long to realize the mystery woman is Ariane.
He informs his client that his daughter fabricated her love life. He tells Flannagan that she is a little fish that he should throw back, since she is serious and he wants to avoid serious relationships.

Frank decides to leave Paris, pretending to be on his way to meet former lovers. At the station, as Ariane runs along the platform beside his departing train, with her femme-fatale facade cracking as her love shows through, Frank changes his mind and sweeps her up in his arms onto the train. In the American version, Chavasse reports that they marry.

Cast

  • Gary Cooper
    Gary Cooper
    Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

     as Frank Flannagan
  • Audrey Hepburn
    Audrey Hepburn
    Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...

     as Ariane Chavasse
  • Maurice Chevalier
    Maurice Chevalier
    Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...

     as Claude Chavasse
  • John McGiver
    John McGiver
    John Irwin McGiver was a character actor who made more than a hundred appearances in television and motion pictures over a two-decade span from 1955 to 1975....

     as Monsieur X
  • Van Doude as Michel, Ariane's boyfriend
  • Lise Bourdin as Madame X

Production

Love in the Afternoon was the first of twelve screenplays by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, who met when Wilder contacted Diamond after reading an article he had written for the Screen Writers Guild monthly magazine. The two men immediately hit it off, and Wilder suggested they collaborate on a project based on a German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 film he had co-written in the early 1930s.

Wilder's first choice for Frank Flannagan was Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...

 "It was a disappointment to me that he never said yes to any picture I offered him," Wilder later recalled. "He didn't explain why. He had very strong ideas about what parts he wanted." The director decided to cast Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

 because they shared similar tastes and interests and Wilder knew the actor would be good company during location filming in Paris. "They talked about food and wine and clothes and art," according to co-star Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...

, Wilder's only choice for Ariane. Talent agent
Talent agent
A talent agent, or booking agent, is a person who finds jobs for actors, authors, film directors, musicians, models, producers, professional athletes, writers and other people in various entertainment businesses. Having an agent is not required, but does help the artist in getting jobs...

 Paul Kohner
Paul Kohner
Paul Kohner . The native of Bohemia in Austria-Hungary came to Hollywood in 1920 after having been a news reporter in Prague...

 suggested Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...

 for the role of Claude Chavasse, and when asked if he was interested, the actor replied, "I would give the secret recipe for my grandmother's bouillabaisse
Bouillabaisse
Bouillabaisse is a seafood soup made with various kinds of cooked fish and shellfish and vegetables, flavored with a variety of herbs and spices such as garlic, orange peel, basil, bay leaf, fennel and saffron. Bouillabaisse is a traditional Provençal fish stew originating from the port city of...

 to be in a Billy Wilder picture."

Filming locations included Château de Vitry in Val-de-Marne
Val-de-Marne
Val-de-Marne is a French department, named after the Marne River, located in the Île-de-France region. The department is situated to the southeast of the city of Paris.- Geography :...

, Palais Garnier
Palais Garnier
The Palais Garnier, , is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier...

, and the Hôtel Ritz Paris
Hôtel Ritz Paris
The Hôtel Ritz is a grand palatial hotel in the heart of Paris, the 1st arrondissement. It overlooks the octagonal border of the Place Vendôme at number 15...

.

Music plays an important role in the film. Much of the prelude to the Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 opera Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...

is heard during a lengthy sequence set in the opera house, and Gypsy style
Gypsy style
The term gypsy style refers to the typical way East European music is played in coffeehouses and restaurants, at parties, and sometimes on-stage, in European cities. Music played in this style is known by the general public as "gypsy music"....

 melodies underscore
Underscore
The underscore [ _ ] is a character that originally appeared on the typewriter and was primarily used to underline words...

 Frank's various seductions. Matty Malneck
Matty Malneck
Matty Malneck was an American jazz violinist, violist and songwriter.Malneck's first professional gigs as a violinist began when he was age 16. He worked with Paul Whiteman from 1926 to 1937, and also recorded in the same period with Frank Signorelli, Frankie Trumbauer, Bix Beiderbecke, and...

, Wilder's friend from their Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...

 days in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, wrote three songs for the film, including the title tune. Also heard are "C'est si bon
C'est si bon
"C'est si bon" is a popular song, sometimes also referred to by the English translation of the title, "It's So Good". The music was written in 1947 by Henri Betti, the French lyrics by André Hornez, and the English lyrics by Jerry Seelen...

," "L'ame Des Poètes" by Charles Trenet
Charles Trenet
Charles Trenet was a French singer and songwriter, most famous for his recordings from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, though his career continued through the 1990s...

, and "Fascination," which is hummed repeatedly by Ariane.

For the American release of the film, Maurice Chevalier recorded an end-of-film narration letting audiences know Ariane and Frank are married and living in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. Although Wilder objected to the addition, he was forced to include it to forestall complaints that the relationship between the two was immoral.

The film was a commercial failure in the United States, prompting Allied Artists to sell the distribution rights for Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, where it was a major success under the title Ariane.

Critical reception

Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

 of the New York Times called the film a "grandly sophisticated romance" "in the great Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...

 tradition" and added, "Like most of Lubitsch's chefs-d'oeuvre
Masterpiece
Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....

, it is a gossamer sort of thing, so far as a literary story and a substantial moral are concerned . . . Mr. Wilder employs a distinctive style of subtle sophisticated slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...

 to give the fizz to his brand of champagne . . . Both the performers are up to it — archly, cryptically, beautifully. They are even up to a sentimental ending that is full of the mellowness of afternoon."

TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

noted the film has "the winsome charm of Hepburn, the elfin puckishness of Chevalier, a literate script by Wilder and Diamond, and an airy feeling that wafted the audience along," but felt it was let down by Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

, who "was pushing 56 at the time and looking too long in the tooth to be playing opposite the gamine Hepburn . . . With little competition from the wooden Cooper, the picture is stolen by Chevalier's bravura turn."

Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

thought "the film as a whole is rather let down by the implausible chemistry that is meant to develop between Cooper and Hepburn."
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