I don't think I was aware of Hollywood's predilection of having young actresses as a love interest to older actors until Adrian Lyne's INDECENT PROPOSAL (1993) was released. In that film, Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson do play a couple around the same age whose lives are rocked when billionaire Robert Redford offers them one million dollars if he can sleep with Moore for a night. Redford was 26 years older than Moore. INDECENT PROPOSAL'S plot would cause some controversy. Redford would start to run into this age disparity beginning with Ivan Reitman's LEGAL EAGLES (1986) in which he and Debra Winger are rival lawyers who have a romantic interest in each other as well. Redford and Winger's age difference was 19 years.
Hollywood seemed afraid to let Marilyn Monroe have a love interest with anyone near her age. In Henry Hathaway's film noir NIAGRA (1953) Monroe is married to Joseph Cotten, 21 years her senior. Laurence Olivier is 19 years older than Monroe when they starred together in THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL (1957). At least in Joshua Logan's BUS STOP (1956) Monroe is allowed to have a romantic interest closer to her age in cowboy Don Murray who was three years younger than Monroe. Add Audrey Hepburn to the list of young actresses paired with mature, older actors. Playing a princess gone AWOL in Rome in William Wyler's ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953), Hepburn has a brief fling with reporter Gregory Peck who's 13 years her senior. Stanley Donen's CHARADE (1963) has the epic pairing of Cary Grant with Audrey Hepburn. Their age difference was 25 years. And in Billy Wilder's SABRINA (1954), chauffeur's daughter Hepburn is pursued by playboy William Holden (11 years difference) but ends up with his older brother Humphrey Bogart (30 years older than Hepburn).
Speaking of Billy Wilder, he seemed obsessed with the younger woman/older man scenario. Besides SABRINA, there's Wilder's comedy THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955) where beautiful young new neighbor Marilyn Monroe who unwittingly tempts dutiful husband Tom Ewell whose family is away on vacation. Ewell was 17 years older than Monroe. In the 1950s, Monroe and Hepburn were Wilder's young muses to explore love and relationships with older men. Audrey Hepburn's other film with Billy Wilder was LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (1957) starring Gary Cooper and Maurice Chevalier, filmed in the world's most romantic city of Paris, France. Once again, Hepburn is wooed by the older Cooper (28 years her senior). I liked LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON more than SABRINA which I'll talk more about shortly.
With a screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond (the two co-wrote some of Wilder's best films) based on the novel by Claude Anet and directed by Wilder, LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON introduces us to private eye Claude Chavasse (Maurice Chevalier) who is hired by cuckolded husbands to spy on their cheating wives. Claude has been hired by Englishman Monsieur X (John McGiver) to spy on his wife Madame X (Lisa Bourdin) who is hanging out with notorious American playboy and millionaire businessman Frank Flannagan (Gary Cooper) at his Ritz Carlton suite. Claude returns to his apartment after photographing Flannagan and Madame X together. Claude lives with his cello playing daughter Ariane Chavasse (Audrey Hepburn). For fun, Ariane has been reading up on her father's case files. When Monsieur X shows up at Claude's for an update, he's devastated by the news of his wife's supposed infidelity. He takes out a pistol from his luggage and heads over to the Ritz to shoot Flannagan.
Ariane overhears Monsieur X's plan. She rushes to the Ritz Carlton ahead of Monsieur X, sneaks into Flannagan's suite, and warns Flannagan and Madame X that Monsieur X is on to them. When Monsieur X bursts into the room, he finds Flannagan not with his wife but with Ariane. Monsieur X leaves, happy Claude was wrong. Flannagan is intrigued by Ariane and invites her back to his suite the next evening, his last night in Paris. Ariane doesn't commit to the invitation. Ariane returns home and reads up on Flannagan's escapades in her father's files. She's not sure she wants to have dinner with him. She tries to write a letter declining his invite but ends up going to the Ritz to tell Flannagan in person. Flannagan woos her with champagne and his own private musical quartet the Gypsies. She teases him with her knowledge of his past dalliances. He wants to know her name, but Ariane won't reveal her identity. Flannagan departs for his next European liaison, leaving Ariane to return to her mundane life.
Ariane is melancholy after Flannagan departs. She follows his escapades around the world via newspaper articles for the next year. She begins to date her fellow music student Michel (Van Doude) although she's not really into him. A year passes. Ariane and Michel go to the symphony where she spies Flannagan in attendance with a beautiful socialite. At intermission, Ariane runs into Flannagan who doesn't remember her at first. "I'm the girl in the afternoon," Ariane reminds him. Finally, Flannagan recalls her and invites her to his hotel room the next afternoon. Ariane "borrows" an ermine fur coat from one of her father's clients when she visits Flannagan the next day. Ariane pretends it's a gift from one of her suitors. She lies to Flannagan that she's seeing numerous rich men (all clients she's read about in her father's files). Claude grows worried when Ariane returns home late and with the borrowed fur coat. Flannagan takes Ariane (and the Gypsies) on a picnic and rows her around a small lake. Flannagan starts to become jealous from her make-believe trysts. Flannagan says he doesn't believe in love but he's falling for Ariane.
Flannagan runs into Monsieur X at a Turkish steam bath. Monsieur X is still giddy that his wife wasn't cheating on him (so he thinks). Flannagan complains that the young lady he's seeing may have multiple suitors. Monsieur X recommends Flannagan contact Claude Chavasse, the best private detective in Paris to uncover who the young woman is. Flannagan goes to Claude's apartment and hires him to learn the identity of his young lady. Ariane's washing her hair in the bathroom and doesn't see or hear Flannagan. Claude quickly deduces that Flannagan's mystery woman is his daughter Ariane. Claude arrives at the Ritz Carlton where he debriefs Flannagan that the nameless girl is his daughter Ariane. Claude advises Flannagan to break the relationship off. Flannagan dutifully agrees, telling Ariane he's bored of Paris and leaving for the French Rivera. Ariane accompanies Flannagan to the train station where the two of them will have a dramatic goodbye with Claude closely following them. But the finale may not be what you or I expect.
Although I've only seen SABRINA once, I think I liked LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON more. Yes, SABRINA has an all-star cast with Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, and Audrey Hepburn. But Bogart just looks too old to be a love interest for Hepburn. He looks like her grandfather. The same could be said for Gary Cooper in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON but the white tuxedo and slicked back hair (and possibly a good make-up artist) make his pursuing Hepburn a little more palatable. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON for the most part has a more whimsical nature to it from Wilder's opening humorous montage of various couples kissing around Paris (including two generals kissing each other on both cheeks at some military procession) to the running gag of the four-person ensemble the Gypsies playing music for Flannagan in his hotel room, on a rowboat following Flannagan and Ariane on a lake, and even in a steam bath with Flannagan.
Wilder's plotting is always so good with plenty of character criss crosses. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON begins with Claude the detective secretly photographing playboy Flannagan. By the end of the film, Flannagan is hiring Claude to find out who his young female companion is. We know already but Claude deduces that Flannagan is seeing his daughter Ariane. Claude has come full circle from spying on Flannagan to working for Flannagan and spying on his own daughter. Monsieur X goes from depressed and homicidal at the thought of his wife cheating on him to happily recommending to Flannagan (the man who was with his wife) Paris's best detective to find out who Flannagan's young mysterious girlfriend is.
After what I think is the disaster of Bogart and Hepburn becoming romantically involved at the end of SABRINA, I was sure Wilder had it all figured out for the finale of LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON. Cooper and Hepburn's back and forth, whirlwind romance and flipping of jealousy from Hepburn at first with Cooper's extramarital shenanigans to Cooper becoming jealous of Hepburn's string of (made up) lovers seemed destined for a proper bittersweet ending. Claude even begs Flannagan to break up with Ariane and Flannagan agrees. But the dramatic good-bye at the train station and Claude's reaction to it were not what I was expecting. Maybe filmgoers weren't either as LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (as enjoyable as it is) would not be a box office hit. The audience (like critics) felt Cooper was too old to be Hepburn's lover.
Billy Wilder films always have a little bit of gallows humor to them. In both SABRINA and THE APARTMENT (1960), the lead female characters try to commit suicide before they're rescued by their future love interests. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) opens with the two heroes of the film (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) accidentally witnessing the St. Valentine's Massacre in Chicago and having to dress up as women to evade gangsters. Even Wilder's excellent WWII drama STALAG 17 (1953) has dark humor woven throughout its tense tale of American flyers in a German POW camp.
In LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, the dark humor is the fact that detective Claude Chavasse, the dapper French divorce detective who has the seedy task of catching beautiful women cheating on their jealous husbands discovers that his daughter Ariane is the mysterious young lady involved with womanizer Frank Flannagan. It's ironically funny in a way but sad as well. Ariane is an innocent, bored cello playing music student who becomes jaded by the real world reading her father's divorce cases and later, becoming involved with one of her father's most prominent targets.
Audrey Hepburn had come a long way in four years from her breakout role as Princess Ann in ROMAN HOLIDAY. In LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, Hepburn seems more assured as independent, intrepid young heroine Ariane. Her quick thinking saves Flannagan from disaster and possible death from a jealous husband only to get caught up in his web of luxury and romantic dancing. After their one-year break, Ariane turns the tables on Flannagan when they meet again by making him become jealous of her supposed exploits. It's a complicated role that Hepburn handles with aplomb and will prepare her for one of her finest performances as the complicated Holly Golightly in Blake Edwards BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (1961).
Gary Cooper has always been known for playing All-American roles in films like Howard Hawks SERGEANT YORK (1941) or Frank Capra's MEET JOHN DOE (also 1941). Billy Wilder must have licked his chops casting Cooper as less than wholesome womanizer Frank Flannagan. Cooper plays the middle aged Flannagan as charming and suave. One could argue that he's providing comfort to women who are married to terrible husbands. But Flannagan's outlook on love is anything but romantic. "He who loves and runs away, lives to love another day," Flannagan tells Ariane. Ironically, Cooper's off-screen self was closer to Flannagan with Cooper having affairs with actresses Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, and Patricia Neal. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON was the only film Cooper and Wilder made together but Cooper did appear in two films co-written by Wilder including Ernst Lubitsch's BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE (1938) and Howard Hawks BALL OF FIRE (1941).
Since LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON is set in France, you would think there might be a French actor in one of the key roles. Born in Paris, fought in World War I, 1930s Hollywood leading man Maurice Chevalier fills that niche as Parisian private investigator Claude Chavasse. Chevalier book ends LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON appearing mostly in the beginning and end of the film. He makes the film feel more worldly with his thick French accent. Chavasse grounds the film with his fatherly manner whether he's giving advice to his daughter or a cheated upon husband like Monsieur X. Wilder may have been having some fun casting Chevalier as a man following playboy Flannagan in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON. Chevalier would play woman chasing playboys himself in his early American films like Norman Taurog's A BEDTIME STORY (1933) or Ernst Lubitsch's THE MERRY WIDOW (1935), one of four films Chevalier made with Jeanette MacDonald. A year after LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, Chevalier would star in Vincent Minnelli's GIGI (1958) and sing "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" which would become his signature song. It might also be the theme song for Hollywood's studio heads and directors who kept pairing young actresses with older actors.
One last cast member to mention in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON is the delightful, owl-ish looking John McGiver, appearing in his first talking film role as Monsieur X, the English businessman who hires Chavasse to spy on his cheating wife at the beginning of the film. McGiver was actually American, born in New York but sounded English. McGiver would work with Audrey Hepburn again in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S as a Tiffany's jewelry salesman. Besides appearing in numerous television shows for one episode guess appearances like ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS (1958-59) and GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (1966), McGiver had film roles in film classics like John Frankenheimer's THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962) and John Schlesinger's MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969).
Like Alfred Hitchcock, the 1950s was Billy Wilder's golden age of filmmaking. Wilder made some of his best films during that decade including SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950), STALAG 17, SABRINA, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957), and SOME LIKE IT HOT. But Wilder would have some misses too in the 50s. His biopic about aviator Charles Lindbergh THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS (1957) starring James Stewart had an issue similar to LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON. Stewart was too old to play Charles Lindbergh. Wilder should have cast a younger actor to play Lindbergh. In the end, Wilder and other directors went with an established movie star rather than a younger unknown for their projects to ensure the best box office potential.
I wouldn't consider LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON a failure, just a missed opportunity with its bungled finale. Hollywood has come a long way (and it took a long time) to finally start casting romantic love interests around the same age (both young love interests and middle-aged love interests). Naturally, there are some films where the age disparity is essential to the plot like Hal Ashby's comedy HAROLD AND MADE (1971) in which young Bud Cort falls in love with older Ruth Gordon. Their age disparity was 52 years. The age disparity in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON is also part of the plot but the outcome is not realistic. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON is a time capsule of a bygone era with an engaging plot and plenty of humorous moments and romantic interludes. It should be viewed and you the moviegoer can decide for yourself if you believe in its ending or not.
