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A Foreign Affair

(1948)

Directed by Billy Wilder from a script he wrote with Charles Brackett, this tries desperately hard to be so much: propaganda for the effort to rebuild postwar Germany at the same time that we're taking pride in having bombed the bejesus out of Berlin; a charming romantic comedy despite the drawbacks of a nothing leading man (John Lund) and a grotesquely miscast Jean Arthur (who could ever believe her as a prig?); and an updated version of Dietrich's shady-but-plucky saloon singer from Destry Rides Again. And Dietrich--as in Destry (and for that matter, in Der Blaue Engel before both crossed the Atlantic), singing great songs by Friedrich Holländer (as Frederick Hollander)--comes close to providing a saving grace.