Notes on "Love in the Afternoon (1957)"
22 June 2018 (almost midnight)
Love in the Afternoon is an odd film, and it seems the only way to capture its nuances succinctly is to invoke that term Lubitschean when describing it. It's a gentle romantic comedy about an oversexed playboy and pretend playgirl; it's a coming-of-age film with a father-daughter story at its core; it's somehow a morality play about the dangers of free-love, and yet also a celebration of that freedom. It's an outlier in Billy Wilder's filmography, just as his masterpiece The Apartment is. What I mean by this is that there's a tenderness and affection and sympathy for human nature that much of his other work either operates outside the key of, or is diametrically opposed to. Compare it to his previous Audrey Hepburn collaboration Sabrina and you see the same urbane wit and romanticism, but while the human compassion in Sabrina is preserved for key moments (such as sympathy for pre-Paris Sabrina's heartache) in Love in the Afternoon, the entire third act seems to be operating in that mode, not to mention the disappointment on Ariane's face when Flannagan fails to recognize her at first. This is also, perhaps–––I want to skip the qualifications–––this is Wilder's most beautiful lit film, as creamy, glowing auras surround Audrey for the majority of her time in Cooper's suite. Wilder and cinematographer William Mellor use chiaroscuro to great effect, creating striking compositions of the two lovers. This is one of those films with such tender and affective lighting that it helps to elevate it to a whole other level, like Capra's It Happened One Night, or Lubitsch's own Angel––these are masterpieces of the cinema to begin with, and with the lighting, become luxurious art objects. Other compositional effects only add, such as the use of windows and curtains for framing–––the image of Audrey Hepburn, standing in front of those windows in Gary Cooper's suite–––or her peering through it, early on. This is a film obsessed with looking, watching. The film announces it as it begins with professional voyeur Maurice Chevalier––a zoom brings us into the action, a zoom self-consciously announcing a sort of artificiality of watching (one made diegetic by the presence of Chevalier's own telescope). This narrative framework––of the detective, voyeur, patiently watching and waiting––informs the style of the film, one noted by Richard Brody who emphasizes the slowness of the film, a new willingness of Wilder's to slow down and just let things play out. Many shots are static, mid or wide-range, that allow the actors to gracefully move about as we watch. Telephoto lenses are employed throughout to heighten our sense of watching, such as when Ariane watches Flannagan at the opera. It's seemed to me lately that the most fascinating thing in film is when people watch each other–––something brought on by a DePalma double feature of Dressed to Kill and Body Double, followed a day or two later by a viewing of Ozu's Late Spring. Sort of the default concept of cinema, sure, and Hitchcock's modus operandi, it nevertheless is a striking thing to look out for–––how directors watch their characters watching. That, and stretching the moment. How long can we make this go for? In Love in the Afternoon, Wilder luxuriates in the grace, beauty, and tenderness of his characters, sometimes to a fault. It's true, Hepburn and Cooper make a pretty, romantic pair–––nowhere showcased more than when Cooper corners her against the door and seduces her into coming the next night ("You try to be here at four, and I'll try and be good")–––but they also make an ethically ambiguous pair, which the film acknowledges. Innocence versus experience, and innocence's attempt to pretend experience. Just as suicide (especially through stomach pumping) reappears throughout Wilder's work, this pretend philandering foreshadows C.C. Baxter's own, and the price of philandering on those who get in too deep point towards the disjunctive understanding that Fran and Sheldrake have about the nature of their relationship. Here, we see that Flannagan is at heart a good person, if unsentimental and unappreciative of the value of love. Likewise, we can see in Ariane a certain Madame Bovary-ness. Her imagination, getting her all caught up in the exotic and illicit romance of her father's files, and seeing it personified in the playboy-par-excellence. You can see Wilder having fun with the bending of the Production Code's rules as the wheels in her mind start spinning and imaginary lover after imaginary lover begin to appear. The attitude of the film is very much like Audrey–––on the surface, there's play and beauty and humor and imagination (the running gag of the poor barking dog, the back and forth champagne carts, the double entendres ["a great big gun!"], in short, a cynicism about the whole thing––and underneath, there's a vulnerability, that tenderness, that converges uneasily in the final scene, no moreso than in the dangerously ambiguous tone of the music as it strikes up, when Flannagan tells Ariane to be quiet as he kisses her, cramped against the seat of the train. It's a dangerous ending, dangerous like the implications of, well, the entirety of The Major and the Minor.
Love in the Afternoon is an odd film, and it seems the only way to capture its nuances succinctly is to invoke that term Lubitschean when describing it. It's a gentle romantic comedy about an oversexed playboy and pretend playgirl; it's a coming-of-age film with a father-daughter story at its core; it's somehow a morality play about the dangers of free-love, and yet also a celebration of that freedom. It's an outlier in Billy Wilder's filmography, just as his masterpiece The Apartment is. What I mean by this is that there's a tenderness and affection and sympathy for human nature that much of his other work either operates outside the key of, or is diametrically opposed to. Compare it to his previous Audrey Hepburn collaboration Sabrina and you see the same urbane wit and romanticism, but while the human compassion in Sabrina is preserved for key moments (such as sympathy for pre-Paris Sabrina's heartache) in Love in the Afternoon, the entire third act seems to be operating in that mode, not to mention the disappointment on Ariane's face when Flannagan fails to recognize her at first. This is also, perhaps–––I want to skip the qualifications–––this is Wilder's most beautiful lit film, as creamy, glowing auras surround Audrey for the majority of her time in Cooper's suite. Wilder and cinematographer William Mellor use chiaroscuro to great effect, creating striking compositions of the two lovers. This is one of those films with such tender and affective lighting that it helps to elevate it to a whole other level, like Capra's It Happened One Night, or Lubitsch's own Angel––these are masterpieces of the cinema to begin with, and with the lighting, become luxurious art objects. Other compositional effects only add, such as the use of windows and curtains for framing–––the image of Audrey Hepburn, standing in front of those windows in Gary Cooper's suite–––or her peering through it, early on. This is a film obsessed with looking, watching. The film announces it as it begins with professional voyeur Maurice Chevalier––a zoom brings us into the action, a zoom self-consciously announcing a sort of artificiality of watching (one made diegetic by the presence of Chevalier's own telescope). This narrative framework––of the detective, voyeur, patiently watching and waiting––informs the style of the film, one noted by Richard Brody who emphasizes the slowness of the film, a new willingness of Wilder's to slow down and just let things play out. Many shots are static, mid or wide-range, that allow the actors to gracefully move about as we watch. Telephoto lenses are employed throughout to heighten our sense of watching, such as when Ariane watches Flannagan at the opera. It's seemed to me lately that the most fascinating thing in film is when people watch each other–––something brought on by a DePalma double feature of Dressed to Kill and Body Double, followed a day or two later by a viewing of Ozu's Late Spring. Sort of the default concept of cinema, sure, and Hitchcock's modus operandi, it nevertheless is a striking thing to look out for–––how directors watch their characters watching. That, and stretching the moment. How long can we make this go for? In Love in the Afternoon, Wilder luxuriates in the grace, beauty, and tenderness of his characters, sometimes to a fault. It's true, Hepburn and Cooper make a pretty, romantic pair–––nowhere showcased more than when Cooper corners her against the door and seduces her into coming the next night ("You try to be here at four, and I'll try and be good")–––but they also make an ethically ambiguous pair, which the film acknowledges. Innocence versus experience, and innocence's attempt to pretend experience. Just as suicide (especially through stomach pumping) reappears throughout Wilder's work, this pretend philandering foreshadows C.C. Baxter's own, and the price of philandering on those who get in too deep point towards the disjunctive understanding that Fran and Sheldrake have about the nature of their relationship. Here, we see that Flannagan is at heart a good person, if unsentimental and unappreciative of the value of love. Likewise, we can see in Ariane a certain Madame Bovary-ness. Her imagination, getting her all caught up in the exotic and illicit romance of her father's files, and seeing it personified in the playboy-par-excellence. You can see Wilder having fun with the bending of the Production Code's rules as the wheels in her mind start spinning and imaginary lover after imaginary lover begin to appear. The attitude of the film is very much like Audrey–––on the surface, there's play and beauty and humor and imagination (the running gag of the poor barking dog, the back and forth champagne carts, the double entendres ["a great big gun!"], in short, a cynicism about the whole thing––and underneath, there's a vulnerability, that tenderness, that converges uneasily in the final scene, no moreso than in the dangerously ambiguous tone of the music as it strikes up, when Flannagan tells Ariane to be quiet as he kisses her, cramped against the seat of the train. It's a dangerous ending, dangerous like the implications of, well, the entirety of The Major and the Minor.
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