A Foreign Affair (Blu-ray)

From Billy Wilder, the legendary director of Five Graves to Cairo, Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot, Irma La Douce and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes comes this classic comedy that mixes romance with hard-boiled wit in a story about stiff-necked Iowa congresswoman Phoebe Frost (Jean Arthur, Easy Living) mired in jaded postwar Berlin. As she investigates the morale of American troops, she is cynically wooed by fellow Iowan Captain John Pringle (John Lund, The Mating Season), who is trying to cover up his affair with Nazi-tainted chanteuse Erika von Schlütow (Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution). In this often amusing and forever endearing film, Wilder peppers the love story with tart dialogue and satiric jabs at Midwestern naïveté. A Foreign Affair features the wonderful character actor Millard Mitchell (Singin’ in the Rain) as Colonel Rufus J. Plummer.