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!
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!