LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON is Billy Wilder's homage to Ernst Lubitsch, the great director who made some of the most sophisticated and sexiest comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. Lubitsch's touch was lighter than air. That light touch is missing from this film, which suffers from a clunky pace and a sorely miscast Gary Cooper.
It's a shame, because so much is in place that works. Audrey Hepburn is perfect as the ingenue intrigued by an American playboy. She's innocent yet paradoxically knowing and sexy. Her playacting at worldliness is initially funny, then becomes touching once she falls for the ladykiller. The cinematography is gorgeous as is usual for Billy Wilder films (how I mourn for the loss of black and white cinematography in mainstream movies...). Many of the episodes in the film are clever too: the picnic, Ariane's interactions with her overprotective detective father (played excellently by Maurice Chevalier), the bit with the alcohol cart and the band, etc.
But the movie is just WAY. TOO. LONG. It goes on forever with a plodding pace that eventually makes even the best comedic sequences become tiresome. This unfortunate flaw is telegraphed early on with the opening showing how everyone in Paris is "doing it." It's a cute bit that sets the naughty tone to come, but did it have to take more than thirty seconds?
Gary Cooper is also unconvincing as the tempting older playboy. The age gap isn't really the problem, since that's inherent to the story itself (Ariane is first attracted to Frank's many years of sexual experience, after all), but Cooper completely lacks the silver fox charm needed to make Ariane's romantic feelings credible. He just comes off as a loser drunk way past his prime, a lout any sensible girl would lose all interest in after an hour with him. While Humphrey Bogart had similar issues in SABRINA, as others have pointed out on here, he at least could portray the character's hidden kindness and dependable nature, making us understand why Sabrina might prefer him to the handsome but flighty David in the end. Frank is just a charmless drunk and that element of the movie, more than anything else, keeps LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON from fulfilling its true potential.
It's a shame, because so much is in place that works. Audrey Hepburn is perfect as the ingenue intrigued by an American playboy. She's innocent yet paradoxically knowing and sexy. Her playacting at worldliness is initially funny, then becomes touching once she falls for the ladykiller. The cinematography is gorgeous as is usual for Billy Wilder films (how I mourn for the loss of black and white cinematography in mainstream movies...). Many of the episodes in the film are clever too: the picnic, Ariane's interactions with her overprotective detective father (played excellently by Maurice Chevalier), the bit with the alcohol cart and the band, etc.
But the movie is just WAY. TOO. LONG. It goes on forever with a plodding pace that eventually makes even the best comedic sequences become tiresome. This unfortunate flaw is telegraphed early on with the opening showing how everyone in Paris is "doing it." It's a cute bit that sets the naughty tone to come, but did it have to take more than thirty seconds?
Gary Cooper is also unconvincing as the tempting older playboy. The age gap isn't really the problem, since that's inherent to the story itself (Ariane is first attracted to Frank's many years of sexual experience, after all), but Cooper completely lacks the silver fox charm needed to make Ariane's romantic feelings credible. He just comes off as a loser drunk way past his prime, a lout any sensible girl would lose all interest in after an hour with him. While Humphrey Bogart had similar issues in SABRINA, as others have pointed out on here, he at least could portray the character's hidden kindness and dependable nature, making us understand why Sabrina might prefer him to the handsome but flighty David in the end. Frank is just a charmless drunk and that element of the movie, more than anything else, keeps LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON from fulfilling its true potential.