I saw it for the first time last night (Jan. 2006--should have seen it years ago) on TCM (thank goodness for them, and Robert Osborne). I enjoyed the movie and agree with nearly everything positive said here in IMDb. But has anybody commented (including Osborne) that the movie is a pretty blatant ripoff of Ninotchka? Same general situation, same three central character-types. Jean Arthur in the Garbo role; Dietrich sort of in the Ina Claire role (two actresses playing off each other, as another poster said, "at the other end of the spectrum"); John Lund in the Melvyn Douglas role. I don't want to take the comparison of the two actresses too far, since they are actually reversed. Arthur, the comic technician, playing the uptight role, where in Ninotchka Garbo the woman of instinct played it. It was a bit painful to see Dietrich forced to play someone who ends up so unsympathetic (in my view). Was she made to pay American audiences back for the years of Nazism and war? Re: Wilder's Berlin movies, I guess I need to see One, Two, Three again sometime. 40 years ago it seemed quite awful. Cagney made to run around in unfunny manic confusion like Grant was in Arsenic and Old Lace.
Review of A Foreign Affair
