LACMA (Venue Partner)
5905 Wilshire Blvd
323.857.6000
This event has passed.
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Love in the Afternoon
- When
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Friday Oct 30, 2009 (9:35pm)
- Where
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Directions: LACMA is located on Wilshire Boulevard between Fairfax and Curson avenues—midway between Downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica. From the Santa Monica Freeway (10), take Fairfax Avenue north 2 miles to Wilshire Boulevard.
- Price
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$10 general admission. $7 museum members, seniors (62+), students with valid ID.
Love in the Afternoon, Wilder's long awaited tribute to his idol Ernst Lubitsch, is based on a French novel and tells the story of Ariane, an innocent young cello student in Paris whose father is a detective, played by Chevalier, the star of four Lubitsch musicals. In order to spark the romantic interest of Frank, an American millionaire and notorious playboy ensconced at the Ritz, Ariane assumes the guise of a sophisticated woman of affairs; but when Frank hires Ariane's father to investigate the mysterious girl who only visits him in the afternoon, complications arise. Despite the luminous cinematography and lavish production values—for a scene at the Paris Opera, Wilder put 960 extras in evening gowns and white tails; and in order to shoot at will in the Ritz, he had a replica of the hotel's second floor complete with working elevators built by Alexandre Trauner, the renowned set designer of Children of Paradise and Riffifi—this cinematic labor of love was clearly out of step with the times and a critical and box office failure. Today the continental charms of Love in the Afternoon are easier to appreciate: critic Richard Corliss notes that "the film reverberates with Lubitschian touches, Ophulsian caresses, and the gentle fatalism characteristic of both these directors. It is no coincidence that the film's plot carries melancholy echoes of Letter from an Unknown Woman, or that Cooper's rainy, five p.m. departure from a Paris train station evokes memories of the Bogart-Bergman estrangement in Casablanca. Wilder is operating in the same area of old-young, cynical-idealistic romance, where love must be frustrated before it can be fulfilled."
Audrey Hepburn: Then, Now and Forever
1957/b&w/130 min.| Scr: Billy Wilder, I. A. L. Diamond; dir: Billy Wilder; w/ Audrey Hepburn, Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier.
