By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
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Billy Wilder’s satirical comedy starring Marlene Dietrich
Year: 1948
Certificate: u
The very darkest of comedies from the great Billy Wilder. Marlene Dietrich is a Berlin singer enjoying relations with a US officer and a former Nazi; Jean Arthur is icy (and aptly named) conservative Congresswoman Phoebe Frost, worried about the moral decline of the GIs and arriving in post-war Berlin to see what they are getting up to.
Among other things, this is a cynical critique of post-war policies that, released in 1948, came rather close to the bone for critics and audiences of the time. Wilder’s trademark wit and comedy is notably dimmed, perhaps because the Austrian-born Jewish émigré was still raw after learning in 1945 that his mother and grandmother had died in the Holocaust. The authenticity is palpable, though, with Wilder making use of real bombed-out locations in Berlin. (112 minutes)
