Synopsis
Lovestruck conservatory student Ariane pretends to be just as much a cosmopolitan lover as the worldly mature Frank Flannagan hoping that l’amour will take hold.
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Cast
- Gary CooperFrank Flannagan
- Audrey HepburnAriane Chavasse / Thin Girl
- Maurice ChevalierClaude Chavasse
- John McGiverMonsieur X
- Van DoudeMichel
- Lise BourdinMadame X
- Olga ValéryHotel Guest with Dog
- Paul BonifasPolice Chief (uncredited)
- Audrey LongBrunette (uncredited)
- Charles LemontierGeneral (uncredited)
Recommendations
- 100
The New York Times
This grandly sophisticated romance, which Mr. Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond have penned with a courteous nod to a novel by a Frenchman named Claude Anet, is in the great Lubitsch tradition, right down to the froth on the champagne, with a couple of fine additional "touches" that Mr. Wilder may wholly claim. - 90
The New Yorker
The visual gags that Wilder deploys are as stingingly cynical as ever, but here they have a newfound way with time, which they inhabit with an exquisitely controlled leisure. It’s the first of Wilder’s later and greatest films. - 88
Chicago Tribune
Love in the Afternoon is a 1957 romantic comedy by writer-director Billy Wilder that fondly re-created the atmosphere--the brio, wit, star personality and sardonic joie de vivre--of the great Hollywood-continental comic romances of the 1930s. And there's an obvious reason: It's a tribute from one movie comic master to the man who taught him how to do it. [15 Oct 1997, p.1] - 80
Variety
Under Billy Wilder's alternately sensitive, mirthful and loving-care direction, and with Maurice Chevalier turning in a captivating performance as a private detective specializing in cases of amour, the production holds enchantment and delight in substantial quantity. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON had many faults and yet, as the song goes, "with all it's faults, we love it still." - 70
Chicago Reader
Not without its cruelties, but not without its beauties as well. - 70
Los Angeles Times
Coop is too long in the tooth as the rich rogue, but Hepburn and the Parisian locales make this worth watching. [13 Feb 1997, p.F43] - 50
Time Out
The script - Wilder's first with IAL Diamond - has its moments, but by and large it's conspicuously lacking in insight or originality, while Hepburn's fresh-faced infatuation for her all too visibly ageing guide to the adult, sensual world comes across as faintly implausible.
