I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

'A foreign affair' provides good entertainment in a typical mid 20th-century style. Showing morals and attitudes that aren't ours anymore. Marlene Dietrich's sparkling presence fits in well, lifting 'A foreign affair' up to its timeless dimension.Maybe a little history comes in handy as well: situated in the war-torn Berlin of 1947. 'A foreign affair' deals with the desperate poverty of the German civilians who survived the Second World War. It was 'Stunde null' (= zero hour) for them: the war lost, about 35% of their country annexed by other nations, the cities destroyed, a poor living from day to day without steady earnings, and the women permanently at risk of sexual abuse by the occupying foreign soldiers.

Billy Wilder goes back to Berlin after the war and doesn't like it much. If you're expecting a capricious romantic comedy, you won't find it here.Jean Arthur is an uptight Congresswoman from Iowa investigating conditions in the bare ruined choirs of Berlin. The Colonel in charge of wrangling the Congressional committee is Millard Mitchell. He hands the committee members, Arthur included, a piece of boilerplate about how we are teaching the Germans about democracy and baseball. "We teach them that if they steal anything it must be second base." It's all working out very well, if only they can get those damned kids to stop drawing swastikas every place they go.The occupation army isn't much better. It's 1948 and the Russians haven't yet become "real shifty" as they would in Wilder's "One, Two, Three," which appeared twelve years later, although even here they are pretty ugly, dumb, and given to vodka. At the climax, with a dead body on the floor, the night club is empty except for a couple of MPs and four Russians at one of the tables singing the Volga Boatman. But the American troops are taking advantage of the down-and-out Berliners as well, swapping chocolate bars and nylons for more tawdry treats. The Berliners, if they've learned nothing else, have learned the arts of survival under stress and they're very cooperative. Congresswoman Arthur notices how friendly the soldiers and Frauleins are and is perturbed.It develops that two of the major players in this illicit system are an Army Capitain, John Lund, and a nightclub singer, Marlene Dietrich. They swap favors almost every night. Of course, Lund must wind up shepherding Arthur around and they fall in love. Dietrich is jealous about the fading interest of her meal ticket, but the two women know nothing of each other. It's just that their common interest is switching his affection from one to the other.The script by the patrician Charles Brackett and the Jewish refugee Billy Wilder crackles with subversive wit. Nobody comes out looking spotless. Human weaknesses and strengths abound -- mostly weaknesses. The plot changes as it moves along, from mostly funny to mostly dramatic and sad. When she finds out about her man's treachery, Arthur's sadness is palpable, helped along by the photography of Charles Lang, who manages to capture convincingly the wreck that the German capital has now become. People live in piles of rubble, and the script gives them a little humanity. "Do you know what it was like to be a woman when the Russians came in?", Dietrich asks Arthur -- who has no idea.The three songs sung by Dietrich sort of sum up the subject of the film and it's not funny romance -- "The Black Market," "Illusions," and "The Ruins of Berlin." It's funny, though. There are some good gags and amusing situations. But Billy Wilder lost his mother and some of his other family in the Nazi's genocide program, and the wisecracks seem to come out of some dark shadowy corner. It's hard to imagine how it could have been otherwise. His father's grave was buried under a heap of rubble and, when he arrived in Berlin, there were still thousands of putrefying corpses buried under the collapsed bricks.

I have a different view of this film because of the performance of Jean Arthur. In my view, she was ill suited to this role. We typically want to like Jean Arthur, but in this film she is dour to a fault...almost totally unlikable and unsympathetic. But that is one of the few faults of this film. Billy Wilder -- other than the Arthur aspect -- put together a film with snappy dialog and mostly very good performances. Marlene Dietirch, who may have been a tad too old for her part (or was John Lund too young for his part?), put in a fine performance. Lund was good...never quite sure why he wasn't a bigger star. But what takes center stage in this film are the views of post-war Berlin (much of the movie was filmed on location). I had seen footage of the devastation before, but this film showed far more than I had ever seen, and I frankly was not aware the city was this far gone after the war. The print that I viewed on TCM had some distinct problems with the cinematography -- jolting blurring during certain movements, particularly when panning -- but it is not clear to me if the fault was in the original film or due to deterioration, but it was quite distracting. A good but flawed film.

It's comic and then it turns serious with Jean Arthur apparently learning the ropes from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." In "A Foreign Affair" she portrays a Republican Congresswoman from Iowa who knows that 62% of the state is Republican. Remember, we're dealing with 1948 and the Iowans were known to be steady GOP voters.The Congresswoman and others come to Berlin to see how our troops are doing there. She meets up with John Lund and falls for him. He is involved with German singer Marlene Dietrich.Miss Dietrich does an admirable acting job but the songs that she sings can't even succeed though they reflect the period of time we're dealing with. Imagine singing "Black Market," and "In the Midst of Ruins In Berlin?"Of course, Lund has ulterior motives for involving himself with Miss Dietrich as the film draws to a conclusion.