Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Now this is a remarkable movie. Very funny, very romantic - and with an absolutely lovely performance by Audrey Hepburn. I don't understand the bullshit about the miscasting of the male lead. Gary Cooper might be too old for Audrey Hepburn, but he plays this role in his usual underplaying manner, and this works much, much better than most other actors would have been in his role. And because of his charisma the Hepburn-Cooper teaming is not a mismatch. Other greats of that era couldn't have been better: Cary Grant would have been too cool, Peck has never been the Frank Flannagan-type. Younger stars would've been totally outplayed by Audrey. One of Billy Wilder's best films, and if you know his filmography, that means something. Chevalier is very good and sympathetic in the supporting role. And this is one of many films you would ruin with color! I hope the days of those lunatics are over who computer-colored some of the beautiful b/w classics.

Fmovies: I am not a fan of romantic movies but there are a small handful that I love and by far the one I love most (of the less bigger scale types like "Gone With the Wind") is "Love in the Afternoon". I love the story, the camerawork and especially the lead players...Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn. I love these two so much that it's hard to put another great screen couple above them. They make the whole story come alive in their own way. Coop with his dry but lovable wit and charming good looks, and Audrey with her universal charm, wholesomeness and great beauty. I have read in the book "The Complete Films of Audrey Hepburn" that Cary Grant and Yul Brynner were the first two choices to play Coop's part. Thank God that neither were able to. Coop as the character of Frank Flannagan makes the film more romantic and his ever-popular sweet-guy, no-airs-of-any-kind persona makes the film less stuffy than it would with Grant or Brynner. Audrey of course is the perfect Ariane and they shine together in each other's arms. Call it a cliche but that comment fits this film perfectly. See it if you're in the mood for good, romantic farce.

This movie sickened me. I've always liked Gary Cooper, but he is horribly miscast as the aging, corrupt Don Juan, Flanagan. The sight of him pawing Audrey Hepburn, who doesn't look a day over 16 is not appealing.

Maurice Chevalier, who plays Audrey's father,(who I have never liked) actually does an adequate job.

The movie takes place in France, but Chevalier is the only one who has a French accent.

I think this movie was supposed to make us laugh. It just made me disgusted.

Not recommended. 3/10

Love in the Afternoon fmovies. This charming romance restores ones belief that the improbable, no matter how unlikely, has, to paraphrase Conan Doyle, the ring of a singular truth and beauty. The author and director clearly knew a lot about love. I guess my admiration for this film proves that after 30 years in a single blissful relationship, I am still an unabashed romantic. This film is what it's all about. I feel sorry for those art-film historians who fail to be overwhelmed by the depth and charm of this piece and would rather pick it apart with their overly dissecting, maddeningly analytic tweezers, missing the point entirely. Their lives must be rather cold and empty.

This film works. Wilder's genius pulls it off. How many among us know of numerous life-long loves where the age difference between the lovers would appear prohibitive but proves to be only a minor obstacle to a lasting relationship. In my experience life imitates art. In this work it is the very difference in their ages and the differing circumstances of their lives that attract Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn's characters. It is the differences that are extra-normal that make this story so believable. He is attracted to her utterly captivating refined insouciance and she to his masculine-straight forward worldly charm. He is the best of the fantasies she has constructed from her father's (Maurice Chevalier's) detective business files, and she is precisely the down home girl with her wits about her who knows his world and his past and loves him anyway.

Why is it the desire of all those incapable of suspending disbelief even a smidgen to turn every work of art into a highly predictable, formulaic mouthful of insipid pre-stamped pabulum. How shallow. Or perhaps I am not only overly romantic but additionally overly democratic. I am proud to see that at least the positive vote count for this film, that is the large number of 9 and 10 votes, more accurately reflects the quality of this timeless vignette, than do the rather sour comments that I have just read. If you have half a heart you will laugh and cry and truly love this film!

There is likely no more romantic ending to a Hollywood movie than the one in this soufflé-light 1957 romantic comedy, where Audrey Hepburn tries to keep up with a departing train upon which Gary Cooper stands and listens intently to her babbling about her fictitious sexual conquests. Hepburn plays Ariane, a young cellist and the daughter of a Parisian private investigator named Claude Chevasse. She has an unbridled interest in her father's often tawdry cases, chief among them the affairs of Frank Flannagan, a millionaire industrialist and aging playboy who finds himself in various trysts with married women around the world. A certain Monsieur X has come to Chevasse to catch his wife in a suspected extramarital fling with Flannagan. Overhearing Monsieur X's intention to kill his wife and her lover, Ariane decides to warn Flannagan, and they embark on an afternoons-only affair under the pretense that she is as much a worldly bon vivant as he is. Things come to a head when Flannagan becomes infatuated with this mysterious "thin girl" and recruits Crevasse to find out who she is.

Master filmmaker Billy Wilder leaves his unmistakable stamp on this confection with a clever, ironic script co-written with his long-time partner I.A.L. Diamond in their first collaboration. The dialogue is full of their trademark sparkling banter, and leave it to Wilder to use a Gypsy string quartet to act as a chorus for Flannagan's sexual shenanigans. Hepburn is her usual impeccable self as Ariane and especially good fun when she layers the deceptions about her checkered past. Cooper played this type of boulevardier role in the 1930's under masters like Ernst Lubitsch, and it is quite enjoyable to see him come back to this milieu two decades later as an aging lothario. Looking weather-beaten after years of Westerns and adventure pictures, he was given a lot of grief because of the age difference between him and Hepburn, but I actually find the gap quite touching and Cooper surprisingly game. Maurice Chevalier is ideally cast as Crevasse even if has to play down his naturally effervescent manner. Granted the film runs a little too long at 126 minutes, but it is fine, light entertainment similar to Wilder and Hepburn's previous collaboration, the classic 1954 "Sabrina". The print transfer on the 2005 DVD is fine though not outstanding. Unfortunately there are no extras included.

This has always has been my all time favorite romantic comedy. Thanks to Billy Wilder's creative genius this film works despite Gary Cooper being miscast as the leading man. Regrettably, Gary Cooper was not only too old, but lacked the charm and suaveness needed for the role. Cooper was also in the twilight of his career and was suffering from health problems when the film was made. Cary Grant or Gregory Peck would have been more appropriate for the role of Frank Flannagan, the womanizing jet setter who falls madly in love with the daughter of a detective who has been investigating him. Nevertheless even with a miscast Gary Cooper the film works ....thanks to the marvelous performances of Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier, who play the young innocent musician daughter and her snooping, pooping private detective father. The title song "Fascination" with original music by F.D. Marchetti and Franz Waxman serve as a romantic thread that runs tightly through out the entire cinematic heart throbbing experience. Billy Wilder's more noted films such as "The Apartment" and "Some Like It Hot" may have garnered more recognition than this film over the years, but in my opinion none of them have the charm that this film has to offer. In fact if one is willing to "What if?", and trade off Gary Cooper for Gary Grant for the role of Frank Flannagan, I suspect that that this film would have been right up there with the best romantic comedy of all time, "It Happened One Night".