For me, A Foreign Affair (1948) rises above a mere romantic comedy. Yes, the
movie questions the emotional and cultural shortcomings of its characters, as
any romcom should; but it also questions the use and usefulness of their
ideologies. We see two women set up in opposition to each other, to contrast
them as they battle over a man (so far, so Hollywood), but that contrast also
explores their attitudes towards their femininity and how it relates to power
and powerlessness.Jean Arthur plays US Congresswoman Phoebe Frost, who comes from what I assume to be a fairly privileged background in a stable, comfortable society. She often refers to her close agricultural community and of course the libertarian values of the American political system. By contrast, Marlene Dietrich plays Erika Von Schluetow, a former Nazi sympathiser who has managed to do fairly well for herself among the ruins of Berlin; but her cultural infrastructure has been utterly destroyed by war. Where Phoebe has abundant food and clothes, friendly neighbours in Iowa and the authority of a stable political power to back her, Erika has a scavenging, mercenary black market, social relationships built on barter and deceit, and the political powerlessness of a defeated nation. At first glance, the dynamic is simple: Dietrich plays the baddie, the femme fatale with nasty values who will get her just deserts in the end, while Arthur plays the goodie (two-shoes) whose true American worthiness will win both the guy and the moral victory. And that is exactly what happens, in a way; but during the course of the movie the ideologies that these characters represent become muddled – what works in theory becomes confused in practice.
Our first view of Jean Arthur’s Phoebe Frost is a
brilliantly succinct character summary, mostly wordless. Urged by her fellow
passengers to look out of the plane window at the ruins of Berlin below, she
meticulously puts away her pen and glasses first, in a series of special compartments
and dedicated cases. She is unhurried and calm: for her, the importance of
order and personal discipline prevail over the need to confront the human
devastation visible with a simple glance to her right. Arthur immediately
defines Congresswoman Frost as prim, correct and proper – but then undercuts
this with a flash of sincere feeling. When she finally looks down at the ruins,
she gasps “Golly!”. At this point I already believe that “golly” is the most
appropriate expression this character’s vocabulary affords, which is consistent
with the prissy business with her glasses. But Arthur injects the word with
such a sense of shock that depths of soft, emotive warmth suddenly open up
beneath the formal veneer.This short scene establishes two sides of the character, but also the trajectory of her development. That “Golly!” resounds like an echo through the subsequent scenes devoted to rules, exactitude and moral vigour. It’s clear that the character is destined to rediscover the feeling behind the “Golly!” and develop that side of her personality. But first we see a third aspect of her, which is the missionary zeal, the determination to impose and enforce all-American values and morals onto the war-ravaged remaining citizens of Berlin. Arthur’s deft characterisation already implies that this woman’s reforming fervour will be undercut, but it isn’t so obvious that the values she represents will be undercut as well.
It is Dietrich’s character, Erika Von Schluetow, who shows up Phoebe’s limitations as a person, but also lays bare the inadequacies of the values she promotes. Dietrich creates her character in a very different way to Arthur. To start with, her visual impact is enormous – which is essential. Erika is and must be extraordinarily beautiful for the character to work – and of course Dietrich delivers. But Erika’s personality is revealed through a series of contrasting scenes. We see her at home, scrabbling around to get dressed and then fawning on her American lover, Captain John Pringle (played by John Lund). She gamely lets him mime strangling her and threaten to knock her teeth out, and the overall impression is of a needy, rather down-trodden woman who is desperate to wheedle gifts and favours with her physical attractions. Then later we see her singing in a nightclub, so in touch with the people working alongside her (the spotlight operator and piano player – fellow survivors of war) that she can interact with them wordlessly, using casual, intimate gestures. She commands and mesmerises the room, powerful in her glittering gown. It’s a very different person to the fawning woman we saw in the flat, and it becomes clear that this character plays different roles for different purposes in different situations – she can choose to be weak, and choose to be powerful.
But it’s a subtle and dangerous game to play. I can’t
watch this movie without remembering a comparable role that Dietrich played
nearly ten years later, in Witness for the Prosecution (1957). In that
movie she appears as another nightclub singer in a similar bombed-out Berlin
dive, but this time her glamour has no authority. Her trousers, so symbolic of
Dietrich’s glamorous potency since their appearance in Morocco (1930),
now frustrate the mob of sexually aggressive men so much that they rip the
costume open to reveal her famous legs. This symbolic rape is much closer to
the reality of what happened to many women in Berlin after the war than A
Foreign Affair’s picture of
Erika Von Schluetow commanding a crowd with sheer force of personality. The
comparison reminds me that Erika’s power is fragile, and requires deft skill to
maintain. In order to achieve it she has rejected more traditional cultural
values: her songs “Black Market” and “Illusions” reveal that these have become
material for barter, and therefore morally valueless. Hollywoodish romance
(“such romantic illusions”), physical love (“chewing gum for kisses”) and even
nobler ideologies (“ambitions, convictions, the works”) are all up for grabs,
in exchange for the necessaries of life. Erika manages to defy her
powerlessness by treating bankrupted ideologies as commodities, and therefore generating
a detached, aloof glamour.But some of those things that Erika is willing to barter or reject as “illusions” are the same things, perhaps, that Phoebe is desperate to preserve.
Now, the contrast between the women in terms of power ought to favour Phoebe. She always chooses to be upright, correct, and to draw on her political strength. But in fact, Erika seems to hold all the cards throughout the movie, because underneath, Phoebe feels inadequate and vulnerable. This comes out in the scene where they meet for the first time outside Erika’s ruined apartment. Phoebe confronts Erika, demanding answers, determined to position the German citizen within the American moral and legal framework that the congresswoman represents. In response, Dietrich’s Erika assumes a cool, nonchalant manner and never responds to the questions, focussing instead on Phoebe’s failings as a woman, criticising her makeup and fashion choices. Erika cannot defend herself on Phoebe’s terms, so she attacks on her own terms instead – and wins. She carries the victory in the scene because she’s more confident, more beautiful, and wittier. This reveals Erika’s values: urbanity, sophistication, beauty, fashion, a chic attitude and cutting wit – and these enable her to gain power when politically and morally she is cornered and destitute. Moreover, these are the very values that Phoebe lacks, and because she lacks them as a woman (Erika makes it about being a woman) she is undermined.
This undermining produces much of the comedy: the uptight congresswoman attempts to engage with the femme fatale on the latter’s terms, buying a glamorous dress on the black market, changing her hair and makeup. This in turn leads to a breakdown of her moral values – she ends up drinking and dancing in dingy clubs, breaking and entering to read classified files, and getting arrested. Of course, true to the design of all comedy, she is restored to her right self in the end (albeit softer and wiser), but along the way the application of the values that she holds dear are seriously questioned. When Phoebe and Erika are arrested together, we see another aspect (perhaps the true aspect) of Dietrich’s character, as they address each other woman to woman. Erika explains what she went through after the fall of Berlin, and also how she managed to survive. “What do you think it was like to be a woman in this town when the Russians first swept in?” she asks, adding the world-weary refrain: “I kept going.” It becomes clear that the same lax morals and sexualised behaviour that Arthur’s character is so determined to rout in order to preserve the values of society, are exactly what Dietrich’s character uses to both survive and preserve her sense of self when society’s values completely break down.
At this point I can’t help comparing the circumstances
the characters have experienced. When Erika was socialising with Hitler during
the war, she was in a comparative situation of political influence to
Congresswoman Frost, even if the politics involved were diametrically opposed.
When the war ended, Erika rejected the values that could no longer sustain her,
and focussed on those that would. But how would Phoebe have survived the Russians?
Would her values (wholly good in themselves as they are) have helped her to
keep going as well as Erika’s have? In such extreme circumstances, do glamour,
sexual manipulation and sheer chic have equal or even more value than order,
discipline and moral rectitude?Rape and destitution can reduce a human personality to a brutalised victim, but in spite of this, Erika has managed to create herself as a woman – an illusion of desirability and therefore power. It is an illusion, but it has real utility, whereas the homely values that are supposed to be real and grounded are dismissed as the illusions instead. At the end of the movie, Erika is sentenced to carry out hard labour clearing bricks. It’s incongruous to think of Erika in that situation - it threatens to destroy her illusion, her individuality, in the same way that the appalling fallout after the war threatened to do the same. But at the last minute we see her using her power to try to escape her fate, by charming the soldiers sent to guard her. We never find out if she’s successful, but it’s depressing to me to think that she won’t be.