Controversy and Comedy in Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair

In this video I dive deep into the themes and production history of Billy Wilder's underrated classic, A Foreign Affair. It's a weird movie, and I'm obsessed with it.

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[ArturoStojanoff]

Marlene Dietrich's eyebrows are higher than my hopes and dreams, and just as likely to be real.

[guilhermeclausemortiz]

"Be sure to let me know if you like stuff like this" YOU COULD LITERALLY MAKE A ENTIRE VIDEO ABOUT MARLENE DIETRICH'S FOREHEAD AND I WOULD WATCH NO MATTER WHAT! That's how good u are!

[stevenbosch]

My father recalled when Dietrich gave a concert at the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. My dad was an 18 year old cadet. Marlena came out on stage and surveyed her audience of 18 year old men in their summer fatigues and ran off the stage. She came back out and explained she had never before seen so many knobby knees before and thought she was at a Boy Scout jamboree.

[PokhrajRoy.]

I’m so happy that there’s a video on Marlene Dietrich. You can never have too much Marlene Dietrich content.

[robinhahnsopran]

I desperately needed to watch a bisexual vintage-style icon in a movie this week, and I didn't know it until the moment I saw this video.

[ModernGurlz]

how dare youtube not notify me about this

[againstallodds]

@9:20ff. This interview by German film critic Prof. Hellmuth Karasek and German film director Volker Schlöndorff (e.g. The Tin Drum) was conducted and filmed in 1988 in Billy Wilder's PARAMOUNT office. There, on the wall, as both an hommage and a permanent reminder, hung a sign with the categorical imperative in the disguise of a question HOW WOULD LUBITSCH DO IT? Lubitsch (NINOTCHKA, TO BE OR NOT TO BE, HEAVEN CAN WAIT etc. etc.) was born in Berlin, Wilder (like many others) had come to Berlin from Austria-Hungary. Friedrich Holländer can also be seen in Wilder's other Berlin film ONE, TWO, THREE (1961). Chance has is that both these films, FOREIGN AFFAIR and ONE TWO THREE, were shot in two of Berlin's most dramatic post WWII phases: Shortly after AFFAIR had been completed in 1948, the Russians, with their notorious Berlin Blockade, cut off two million West Berliners from free West Germany prompting what has become known as the Berlin Airlift, with hundreds of C47s via three air corridors from Frankfurt, Hannover, and Hamburg bringing there everything the West Berliners needed to survice the icy cold winter 1948/1949 (including even coal). And, while shooting ONE, TWO, THREE in 1961, Wilder was interrupted by the Russians' inducing their East Berlin communist German puppets to build the notorious Berlin Wall (August 13, 1961).

[britneysprsfanforever]

PLEASE do a FULL video of Marelene Dietrich she was such an icon and ageless and beautiful up until the end of her life, thanks.

[ColonelGreen]

This is such a good movie. I only wish Cary Grant, Wilder's original choice for the male lead, had accepted it -- Wilder himself dissed John Lund by remarking he was who you ended up with when Grant said no.

[TeamSukiyo]

I should stop watching videos from this channel, I always end up adding 30 movies to my watchlist

[roddersrodders]

I literally opened YouTube thinking "when will BKR release a new video" to see this was posted 2 minutes ago. As, the singer-actress-songwriter Beyoncé once said "God is real".

[blakeconroy]

Billy Wilder is one of my favorite directors and A Foreign Affair is one of his most underrated films. Both Marlene Dietrich and Jean Arthur are fantastic. Love that you did a video on this great film!

[thomasbirdeno]

Yes, please. More underrated spotlights. Actually, you do you. I'm happy with everything you cover. Thank you for all that you do.

[chriswald]

Billy Wilder was a genius: No matter whether hilarious comedies, dark dramas or films noirs - he nailed it!

[waddlesdpuffin]

One example of a good slow joke one that uses slowness instead of speed as part of its punchline. That scene early on when Jean A is packing up her kit and we see her go through the entire process

[frankpeter]

You do barely mention Jean Arthur here, and she deserves her own video what a fascinating actress. For example: she played ingénue roles into her 40s

[phillipgregoryburkeactor]

Would love an analysis on 1972’s SOUNDER, in honor of our newly minted ancestor, Queen Cicely Tyson. She should have won the Oscar that year. Sorry, not sorry, Liza.

[johnnzboy]

Yes yes more deep-drives if that's what you like doing, all your content is gold.

[moviemonster]

"Let's go up to my apartment. It's only a few ruins from here." Great lines and classic Wilder humorous cynicism that, of course, these days, seems rather touching and innocent as well. Underrated indeed.

[davidzee]

This is just an extraordinary review and deep dive -- thanks so much, I learned a lot. This film and Wilder could be seen as the originator of "too soon?" but the bitter humor is something lost now -- a specific Berlin humor that's satirical and rueful. Ernst Lubitsch personified this in some of his work, but Wilder was more cutting and less sentimental. Dietrich respected him enormously, as she did Orson Welles, and as you say in your comments, told Wilder "only for you!" would she play a Nazi sympathizer. Dietrich recorded one album of Berlin songs and it's worth finding to hear the witty, sexy, and longing sound of the Berlin that was destroyed. Thanks again for this great piece.