Love in the Afternoon

Director Billy Wilder salutes his idol, Ernst Lubitsch, with this comedy about a middle-aged playboy…

• Director: Billy Wilder
• Genre:Comedy / Drama / Romance
• Runtime:130 minutes

Cast

Gary Cooper : Frank Flannagan
Audrey Hepburn : Ariane Chavasse / Thin Girl
Maurice Chevalier: Claude Chavasse
John McGiver : Monsieur X
Van Doude : Michel

Beautiful young French cello student Ariane Chavasse, the daughter of private detective Claude Chavasse, is reading his case files and becomes intrigued by American business magnate Frank Flannagan, a playboy frequently trailed by Claude at the request of jealous husbands whose wives Frank is wooing. When Ariane discovers one of the cuckolded men, identified only as Monsieur X, plans to shoot Frank, she decides to warn him without revealing her identity.

Frank is taken with the mysterious girl, who presents herself as a femme fatale, and she in turn begins to fall in love with the considerably older man. Complications ensue when Frank, determined to discover why Ariane will rendezvous with him only in the afternoon, hires her own father to investigate her. When he learns she is far more innocent than he realized, Frank decides to leave Paris without her. At the station, as Ariane runs along the platform beside his departing train, Frank is overcome with emotion and sweeps her up into his arms. Read more