A Foreign Affair
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Context
A Foreign Affair along with Orsen Wells' The Third Man is the most significant U.S. film made about the Cold War. It is also the most irreverent. Notice in particular the worries about fraternization. That theme also appears, but with a different valence, in Rossellini's Paisan. Notice the images of the Soviet occupation troops. Notice too the funny definition of American hegemony: Wilder himself was a one-time Berliner, which is to say he was a Mitteleuropean, Austrian-born, who like many young artists made his way to the capital of European film, Berlin, in the 1920s (where he re-named himself Billy in the American style). Later he would be lured to Hollywood by the opportunities and high wages, and would become a permanent resident in the U.S. in the face of Nazi persecution of the Jews. In sum, he was (is) a real Hollywood type, of European background, so he knows of what he talks, with a keen eye for the national stereotype, both American and European, conservative and radical, male and female. Later in the semester, you will be watching clips from his 1961 spoof on U.S. consumer society: One, Two, Three, also set in his beloved Berlin. The director of a recent documentary of Wilder, Mel Stuart, has summed up the director's importance quite well, stating that Wilder "brought a European sensibility alond with a love of America to his filmmaking."
Links
- Billy Wilder: biography and filmography
- A Foreign Affair, set in Allied-occupied Berlin at the outset of the Cold War: reviews and articles