Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Directed by Billy Wilder. Starring Audrey Hepburn, Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier, John McGiver, Van Doude.

Wilder’s tribute to Ernst Lubitsch feels too much like imitation, the sentimentality at odds with the archness of the approach, a brand of gauzy sophistication that floats (sometimes merrily) but fails to ever hook. Elfin cellist Hepburn enters the life of aging playboy Cooper, and against her better instincts, falls for him. He moves on, she keeps track of his exploits, and when their paths cross again, she plays sly and teasing games with him to find out how interested he is in return. Some moments sparkle, and Hepburn and Chevalier (as her private detective father investigating the lothario at the beginning because he’s cuckolding Chevalier’s client) exhibit an easygoing charm, but Cooper is gravely miscast as a supposedly slick womanizer, and there’s not enough wit or inspiration to redeem the picture’s unconscionable length. Chevalier’s final line (heard in voiceover) was added at the last minute to appease the Catholic Legion of Decency.

50/100