A Foreign Affair

media release: USA | 1948 | 35mm | 116 min.

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, John Lund

Berlin, 1947: a congressional delegation is headed to a war-torn Berlin to evaluate military morale. U.S. Representative Phoebe Frost of Iowa (Arthur) is particularly concerned with the whereabouts of Erika von Schlütow (Dietrich, giving a career-best performance), a cabaret singer rumored to have been the mistress of high-ranking Nazi officials. Phoebe enlists Captain Pringle (Lund), one of her constituents stationed in Berlin, to aid in her investigation, blithely unaware that Pringle and Erika are lovers. A romantic farce colored by striking tones of lingering wartime danger, A Foreign Affair remains one of legendary writer/director Wilder’s most underrated comedies.

Admission free for all screenings, seating limited. No admission 15 minutes after scheduled start times. Please visit our website for a complete listing of programs and descriptions.

2X: JOHN CARPENTER, BILLY WILDER, MICHAEL MANN, JACKIE CHAN

Our first 2023 calendar offers double doses (presented over two consecutive weeks) of four very different and highly idiosyncratic auteurs. The first two features of celebrated genre director John Carpenter provide a glimpse into Carpenter’s developing style (Dark Star) and a fully-realized embodiment of that style (Assault on Precinct 13). Six-time Academy Award winner Billy Wilder is represented by two wonderful but lesser-known comedies: one from his first decade of filmmaking (A Foreign Affair) and one from his last (Avanti!). Thief and Heat are two highly stylized and critically acclaimed crime films of Chicago-born Michael Mann, and both will be shown on 35mm prints! The amazing martial arts acrobatics of the legendary actor-producer Jackie Chan will be on full display when we screen one entry from each of the popular film series that definitively established his big screen persona: Drunken Master II and Police Story III: Supercop.