A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948)

Watched 10/5/2018

Phoebe Frost: Jean Arthur
Erika von Schluetow: Marlene Dietrich
Capt. John Pringle: John Lund
Col. Rufus J. Plummer: Millard Mitchell
Hans Otto Birgel: Peter von Zerneck
Mike: Stanley Prager
Joe: William Murphy

Director: Billy Wilder
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Richard L. Breen, Robert Harari
Based on a story by David Shaw
Cinematography: Charles Lang
Art direction: Hans Dreier, Walter H. Tyler
Film editing: Doane Harrison
Music: Friedrich Hollaender

It occurs to me that it might be interesting to watch Roberto Rossellini's neorealistic drama Germany Year Zero (1948) back-to-back with Billy Wilder's satiric romantic comedy A Foreign Affair, if only to illuminate the respective visions of the two directors. Both are set in the ruins of postwar, pre-wall Berlin, using the ruins of the city as a correlative for the evil of Nazism. But for Rossellini, that evil is persistent, a lurking danger. For Wilder it's something that may persist but also something that can be overcome by good will and humor. A Foreign Affair is sometimes accused of a nasty cynicism about politics, and certainly its embodiment of American democracy, the congressional fact-finding delegation, is seen as rather clueless and superficial. But for Wilder, a good joke is our best defense against even such evils as Nazism, just as it was for Charles Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940) and Ernst Lubitsch in To Be or Not to Be (1942) -- and later for Mel Brooks in his 1983 remake of the Lubitsch film and his own The Producers (1967).

Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941)

Henry Travers, Aubrey Mather, Oskar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey, Gary Cooper, S.Z. Sakall, Tully Marshall, Barbara Stanwyck, and Richard Haydn in Ball of Fire

Prof. Bertram Potts: Gary Cooper
Sugarpuss O'Shea: Barbara Stanwyck
Prof. Oddly: Richard Haydn
Prof. Gurkakoff: Oskar Homolka
Prof. Jerome: Henry Travers
Prof. Magenbruch: S.Z. Sakall
Prof. Robinson: Tully Marshall
Prof. Quintana: Leonid Kinskey
Prof. Peagram: Aubrey Mather
Joe Lilac: Dana Andrews
Garbage Man: Allen Jenkins
Duke Pastrami: Dan Duryea
Asthma Anderson: Ralph Peters
Miss Bragg: Kathleen Howard
Miss Totten: Mary Field
Larsen: Charles Lane
Waiter: Elisha Cook Jr.

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Thomas Monroe
Cinematography: Gregg Toland
Art direction: Perry Ferguson
Film editing: Daniel Mandell
Music: Alfred Newman

If this intersection of the talents of Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks doesn't feel much like a typical film from either, lacking some of Wilder's acerbity and Hawks's ebullience, it's perhaps because it was made under the watchful eye of producer Samuel Goldwyn. In fact, it's surprising to find Hawks working for Goldwyn at all after the brouhaha over Come and Get It (1936) that led to Hawks's being fired and replaced with William Wyler. But Goldwyn wanted the writing team of Wilder and Charles Brackett to work for him, and Wilder wanted to work with Hawks. Like everyone else in Hollywood, Wilder wanted to direct, and he wound up shadowing Hawks on the set of Ball of Fire, learning from the best. Wilder later called the picture "silly," and so it is -- not that there's anything wrong with that: Some of the greatest pictures both Wilder and Hawks made were silly, viz. Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 1959) and Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938). Ball of Fire never quite reaches the heights of either of those movies, partly because it's encumbered by plot and cast. The "seven dwarfs"  of Ball of Fire are all marvelous character actors, but there are too many of them so the film sometimes feels overbusy. The gangster plot feels cooked-up, which it is. The musical numbers featuring Gene Krupa and his orchestra bring the movie to a standstill -- a pleasant one, but it saps some of the momentum of the comedy. Still, Barbara Stanwyck is dazzling as Sugarpuss O'Shea, performing a comic twofer in 1941 with her appearance in Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve, in which she enthralls Henry Fonda's character as efficiently as she does Gary Cooper's in Ball of Fire. There are those who think Cooper is miscast, but I think he's brilliant -- he knows the role is nonsense but he gives it his all.

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1938)

David Niven, Gary Cooper, and Claudette Colbert in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

Nicole De Loiselle: Claudette Colbert
Michael Brandon: Gary Cooper
The Marquis De Loiselle: Edward Everett Horton
Albert De Regnier: David Niven
Aunt Hedwige: Elizabeth Patterson
M. Pepinard: Herman Bing
Kid Mulligan: Warren Hymer
Assistant Hotel Manager: Franklin Pangborn

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
Based on a play by Alfred Savoir and its English adaptation by Charlton Andrews
Cinematography: Leo Tover
Art direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Usher
Film editing: William Shea
Music: Werner R. Heymann, Friedrich Hollaender

Almost anything goes in screwball comedy, but why does Bluebeard's Eighth Wife feel just a tad off the mark? It has everything going for it: director, screenwriters, stars and supporting cast. But something seems to be missing. There are those who think Gary Cooper is miscast, but Cooper pulled off similar roles -- lovable eccentrics like Longfellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) and Bertram Potts in Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941) -- and director Ernst Lubitsch had established Cooper's gift for sophisticated comedy in Design for Living (1933). There is a certain lack of spark between Cooper and his costar, Claudette Colbert, but that's partly because their characters are not supposed to spark but rather flare. I think the fault lies mainly in the script, which springs Michael Brandon's many previous marriages on us as a surprise and never makes us feel that they're integral to his character. I suspect that the Production Code, which was administered with a heavy hand by Catholic laymen like Joseph I. Breen, blue-penciled so much of the humor surrounding Brandon's divorces that they no longer get the attention they deserve. Still, Cooper and Colbert et al. are fun to watch, and it may be that they are so much more fun to watch in other movies that Bluebeard's Eighth Wife simply suffers by comparison.

Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)

Greta Garbo and Bela Lugosi in Ninotchka

Nina Ivanova Yakushova: Greta Garbo
Count Leon d'Algout: Melvyn Douglas
Grand Duchess Swana: Ina Claire
Iranoff: Sig Ruman
Buljanoff: Felix Bressart
Kopalski: Alexander Granach
Commissar Razinin: Bela Lugosi
Count Alexis Rakonin: Gregory Gaye
Hotel Manager: Rolfe Sedan
Mercier: Edwin Maxwell
Gaston: Richard Carle

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Walter Reisch, Melchior Lengyel
Cinematography: William H. Daniels
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Randall Duell
Film editing: Gene Ruggiero
Costume design: Adrian
Music: Werner R. Heymann

I had forgotten how audacious Ninotchka is when viewed in the context of the volatile international politics of 1939, a year teetering on the brink of a world war that had already begun in Britain when the film was released in November. All of the jokes about Stalin's show trials ("There are going to be fewer but better Russians"), about the ineffectual economic planning ("I've been fascinated by your five-year plan for the past 15 years"), and about the deprivations suffered by the Soviet people feel edgy, even a little sour, when we remember that almost everyone was just about to embrace the Soviets as a valued ally against the Third Reich. It's a film that shows a bit less of the "Lubitsch touch" than of the cynicism of Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the screenplay. That it transcends its era and still feels vital and funny today has mostly to do with Greta Garbo, whose shift from the Party-line drone to the vital and glamorous convert to capitalism, along with the delicate way she retains elements of the latter on her return to Moscow, is beautifully delineated. That it was her penultimate film is regrettable, but except for her definitive Camille I think it's her greatest performance.

The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder, 1945)

If such a thing as conscience could be ascribed to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it might be said that giving The Lost Weekend and director Billy Wilder the best picture and best director Oscars was an attempt to atone for its failure to honor Wilder's Double Indemnity with those awards the previous year. (The awards went to Leo McCarey and his saccharine Going My Way.) The Lost Weekend is not quite as enduring a film as Double Indemnity: It pulls its punches with a "hopeful" ending, though it should be clear to any intelligent viewer that Ray Milland's Don Birnam is not going to be so easily cured of his alcoholism as he and his girlfriend, Helen St. James (Jane Wyman), seem to think. But the film also lands quite a few of its punches, thanks to Milland's Oscar-winning performance and the intelligent (and also Oscar-winning) adaptation of Charles R. Jackson's novel by Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett. For its day, still under the watchful eyes of the Paramount front office and the Production Code, The Lost Weekend seems almost unnervingly frank about the ravages of alcoholism, then usually treated more as a subject for comedy than for semi-realistic drama. The Code prevented the film from ascribing Birnam's drinking to an attempt to cope with his homosexuality, but in some respects this can be seen today as a good change made for the wrong reason, since the roots of addiction to alcohol are far more complicated than any simplistic explanation such as self-loathing. The Code was also powerless to prevent Wilder and Brackett from finessing the suggestion that the friendly "bar girl" Gloria (Doris Dowling) is anything but an on-call prostitute. Increasingly, post-World War II films would treat audiences like the adults the Code administration wanted to prevent them from being. Wyman's Helen is a bit too noble in her persistent support of Birnam's behavior -- she moves from ignorance to denial to enabling to self-sacrifice far too swiftly and easily. But in general, the supporting cast -- Phillip Terry as Birnam's brother, Howard Da Silva as the bartender, Frank Faylen as the seen-it-all-too-often nurse in the drunk ward -- are excellent. The fine cinematography is by John F. Seitz. The score, which is laid on a bit too heavily, especially in the use of the theremin to suggest Birnam's aching need for a drink, is by Miklós Rózsa.

Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950)

Sunset Blvd., with the abbreviation, is the "official" title because it's the only way we see it in the credits of the film: as a shot of the street name stenciled on a curb. So from the beginning we are all in the gutter, and later we are looking at the stars -- or at least one fading star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Accepting the role of Norma was a truly courageous act by Swanson: She must have known that it was the part of a lifetime, but that posterity would remember her as the campy has-been silent star, and not as the actress who had a long and distinguished career, playing both comedy and drama with equal skill, or as the spunky title character of Sadie Thompson (Raoul Walsh, 1928), which earned her her first Oscar nomination. The role of Norma Desmond might have won her an Oscar if it hadn't been for another star whose career was beginning to fade: Bette Davis, who was nominated for All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz). The conventional wisdom has it that Swanson and Davis split the votes, allowing Judy Holliday to win for Born Yesterday (George Cukor). This was also a landmark film for William Holden, who had been an unremarkable leading man until his performance as Joe Gillis established his type: the somewhat cynical, morally compromised protagonist. It would earn him an Oscar three years later for another Wilder film, Stalag 17 (1953), and would be his stock in trade through the rest of his career, in films like Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955), The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969), and Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976). Holden almost didn't get to play Gillis; Montgomery Clift was offered the role but backed out. One story has it that Clift thought the role, of a man out to get the money of a woman he doesn't love, was too much like one he had just played, in The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949), while others have said that he backed out because the story of a man's affair with an older woman would remind people of his own earlier affair with the singer Libby Holman, 16 years his senior. There is in fact an unfortunate whiff of disapproval in Wilder's treatment of the age difference between Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis -- Norma is said to be 50, which was Swanson's age when the film was made, while Holden, who was 32, was made up to look even younger. Wilder, it must be observed, seemed to have no problems when the age difference was reversed, as in his 1954 film Sabrina, in which a 54-year-old Humphrey Bogart romances a 25-year-old Audrey Hepburn, or the 1957 Love in the Afternoon, with 28-year-old Hepburn and 56-year-old Gary Cooper. None of this, however, seriously detracts from the fact that Sunset Blvd. remains one of the great movies, with its its superb black-and-white cinematography by John F. Seitz. It won Oscars for the mordant screenplay by Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman Jr., the art direction and set decoration of Hans Dreier, John Meehan, Sam Comer, and Ray Moyer, and the score by Franz Waxman. It's also one of the few films to receive nominations in all four acting categories: In addition to Swanson and Holden, Nancy Olson and Erich von Stroheim received supporting player nominations, but none of them won.

Niagara (Henry Hathaway, 1953)

Niagara was one of three movies starring Marilyn Monroe that were released in 1953. The other two, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks) and How to Marry a Millionaire (Jean Negulesco), were hits, confirming what we now know: that Monroe was a peerless comedian, not, as Niagara wants her to be, a film noir siren. She had done earlier turns in legitimate film noir, a small role in The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950), larger ones in Clash by Night (Fritz Lang, 1952) and Don't Bother to Knock (Roy Ward Baker, 1952), so this time 20th Century-Fox decided to go all out in exploiting her as a femme fatale. There are many things wrong with Niagara, one thing being that it can't quite decide whether it's a noir thriller or a Technicolor travelogue about the eponymous falls and their various tourist attractions. But what's most wrong about it is its misuse of Monroe, who is not even the real lead character in the film: Her role is decidedly secondary to that of Jean Peters. And she is grotesquely exploited in her part as Rose Loomis, unhappily married to a mentally unstable man (Joseph Cotten) and plotting to have her lover (Richard Allan) bump him off. The studio can't resist dressing her in skin-tight clothes, with high heels that make it impossible for her to walk without bumps and grinds, and flaming red lipstick that's obviously freshly put on even when she's supposed to be waking up in the morning. A producer less under the control of the studio than Charles Brackett (who also wrote the clunky screenplay with Walter Reisch and Richard L. Breen) might have made Rose into a credible character, but here she's only an adolescent boy's fantasy. But even a misused Marilyn is better than no Marilyn at all, as we find out two-thirds of the way through the movie when the focus shifts to the character played by Peters and her grinning ass of a husband (Max Showalter), and we have nothing to marvel at but the Falls. If the screenplay had fallen into the hands of a Hitchcock, Niagara might have been a success, but Henry Hathaway directs as if he's bored by the whole thing.