Love in the Afternoon

Love in the Afternoon (known in Spanish as Amor en la tarde in Argentina and Ariane in Spain) is a film directed by Billy Wilder, released in 1957. The script by Wilder and his usual collaborator I.A.L. Diamond is based on the novel Ariane, by Claude Anet, which had already been made into a film.

Plot

Young Ariane Chavasse (Audrey Hepburn) overhears a conversation between her father, private detective Claude Chavasse (Maurice Chevalier) and his client Monsieur X (John McGiver). After learning of his wife's daily appointments with tycoon Frank Flannagan (Gary Cooper), Monsieur X announces that he will kill Flannagan that very day. Claude is indifferent, disgusted only by the damage it will do to him (Flannagan is a notorious womanizer with a long history of affairs all over the world), but his daughter sets out to prevent the murder. When Ariane can't get the police to listen to her, since the crime she wants to report has not yet taken place, she decides to notify Flannagan herself.

Ariane arrives just in time: when Monsieur X sneaks into Flannagan's suite at the Ritz Hotel, he sees him with Ariane, not his wife (who has just escaped from the room). After the excuses of her confused husband, Flannagan is intrigued by the mysterious woman, who refuses to give him any information about her person, not even her name. For him she becomes Skinny, and she, who has no sentimental experience, pretends to be a femme fatale to provoke her interest. One day she has a date with him before her cello class, to which she arrives with mixed feelings; she ultimately stays with him until she leaves on her plane, firmly in love with a man considerably older than her. Her father, a widower who has unsuccessfully tried to hide the sordid details of the surveillance that he has detailed in the investigation dossier, realizes the change in mood but not that the reason lies in one of the cases. of the.

A year later, Flannagan finds himself back in Paris. They meet again when she discovers him among the audience at an opera, she pretends to be in the hall and they start seeing each other again. This time, when he questions her, she provides him with a long list of ex-lovers drawn from her father's cases, of which Flannagan is the twentieth. The playboy goes from being amused to tormented by the possible comparisons, although he is not sure that these former lovers are real. When he happens to meet Monsieur X, still regretful of his accusations, the latter recommends that he go to Claude Chavasse, and so Flannagan unknowingly entrusts Ariane's father with the surveillance of his own daughter.

It doesn't take long for Chavasse to figure out that the mystery woman is Ariane. He informs her client that the story of her lovers is false, and asks her to forget about her, since he avoids serious relationships with her so much. Flannagan, who feels remorse for the difference in age, decides to leave Paris on the pretext of an appointment with another of his lovers; At the station, Ariane waves him off from the platform and runs after the train as her femme fatale façade betrays the love she truly feels, causing Flannagan to change her mind and put her on the moving train. Chavasse's report lets us know that they are now married and living in New York.

Music

The songs that are part of the soundtrack of the film are:

• "Fascination", music (1904) by Fermo Dante Marchetti, lyrics (1905) by Maurice de Féraudy.
• "C'est si bon", music (1947) by Henri Betti, lyrics (1947) by André Hornez.
• "L'ame de Poètes", lyrics and music (1951) by Charles Trenet.
• "Love in the Afternoon," "Ariane" and "Hot Paprika", by Matty Malneck, composed for the film.

After the film was released, versions of some of these songs were released with English lyrics:

• "Fascination", lyrics by Dick Maning, interpreted, among others, by Nat King Cole and Jane Morgan.
• "Love in the Afternoon", by Jonhy Mercer, interpreted, among others, by Jerry Vale.