A Foreign Affair (1948) on Netflix
Approved19481h 56mComedyDramaRomance
In occupied Berlin, Captain John Pringle is torn between Erika von Schlütow, the ex-Nazi cabaret singer he protects, and Phoebe Frost. She is the congresswoman investigating Erika.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.3/109,606 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
A congressional committee arrives in occupied Berlin in 1947 to look into the morale of American troops, and Iowa congresswoman Phoebe Frost does not accept the account Colonel Rufus J. Plummer gives the visitors. She has seen for herself what she considers the depravity of the city, especially between American soldiers and German women. She is concerned about Erika von Schlütow, a cabaret singer who held a high Nazi rank during the war and whose file an unnamed American officer is shielding. Phoebe asks Captain John Pringle, a fellow Iowan she met on her travels, to help her find out who that officer is. Pringle is Erika's lover and protector, and Phoebe does not know it.
Cast
- Boyd Davisas Giffin
- Robert Malcolmas Kramer
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Foreign Affair (1948)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Serving with the US Army in Germany, Billy Wilder was promised government help if he made a picture about occupied Germany. Erich Pommer, charged with rebuilding German cinema, handed him whatever was left of the UFA studios, and Wilder researched the script by interviewing American troops and Berliners living in the ruins.
- Wilder wanted Marlene Dietrich for the cabaret singer Erika from the start, and Friedrich Hollaender had already written her three songs, but Wilder feared she would refuse to play a Nazi collaborator. He talked her round, and on screen she wears two Irene gowns she had worn entertaining American troops during the war.
- Jean Arthur had retired and was attending college when Wilder talked her into coming back to play the Iowa congresswoman Phoebe Frost. She spent the shoot convinced Wilder favoured Dietrich, and afterwards signed a twelve-year, four-picture deal with Paramount.
- Much of the location work was shot inside the Soviet occupation zone of Berlin from August 1947, with the rest finished at Paramount in Hollywood. Once shooting ended the whole picture was cut in a single week.
- The film vanished from British shops in 2007. After it appeared in an eighteen-film Marlene Dietrich collection, Dietrich's estate won an injunction over an alleged breach of contract that forced Universal Pictures to withdraw the whole DVD set.
