Love in the Afternoon

Manifesting himself as a successor to Lubitsch, Billy Wilder mounted his own pedestal as a master of romantic comedy, in the first of his long-lasting collaboration with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond. Crafting his own “touches” of subtle sophisticated slapstick, Wilder mixes glamour, enchantment and cynical mirth in this Cinderella-meet-Don Juan story – a lovely, innocent Audrey Hepburn, daughter of a private eye, comes to rescue and falls for Gary Cooper, a high-flying playboy millionaire whom his father investigates. With pails of champagne and gypsy musicians’ streams of Fascination Waltz, their mood-drenched, seductive rendezvous in the afternoon becomes a wickedly funny game of matching wits leading to the evolution of love.