A Foreign Affair

I must have read something recently about Billy Wilder's forgotten postwar romantic comedy A Foreign Affair (1948), becasue I was compelled to seek it out. It seems audacious to film a romantic comedy amid the rubble of Berlin in 1948. Wilder was an emigrant form Vienna as was his lead actress Marlene Dietrich and composer Friedrich Hollandaer. The love triangle concerns a straight-laced congresswoman form Iowa (Jean Arthur) and a rake of a Captain (John Lund) and his mistress (Dietrich). Under the seemingly simple romantic comedy is a cynical reappraisal of what was going on in postwar Germany. It also has some subversive suggestions about fraternization between American servicemen and the German "Frauleins" that was going on in all conquered Axis countries. I find it hard to believe that it got green lighted so easily-I suppose this was quite some time before self-censoring "politically correct" attitudes were in favor. But I can't believe no studio executive didn't question whether it was "too soon?" or not. It is a sophisticated and cagey comedy that has a documentary footage feel in the location footage of bombed out Berlin and crumbling sets of the impoverished German characters-an unlikely setting for a romantic comedy.