Yet another entry (and Wilder's second, counting the equally ludicrously lopsided "Sabrina") in the all too familiar transaction, dressed up as an alleged "fairy tale", of Old Male Wealth Exchanged for Beautiful Young Female Flesh.



And yet again, a great many viewers seem to be all too willing to ignore the elephant in the room: absent his enormous wealth, no one would find even the legendary Gary Cooper appropriate, at 56, plausible as the object of the 18-year-old ingenue's lovesick passion. In fact, it's Ariane herself who tells us this, as she devours the news clippings about the millionaire playboy's life - it is precisely the lifestyle fueled by Flannigan's wealth that generates those clippings and Ariane's adoring "fascination" [sic].



Coop certainly looks better in this film than Bogart did as Linus in Wilder's "Sabrina", but to say that he looks appropriate as anything but the "catch of the day" because of his wealth, is beyond ridiculous. If anyone is being honest, Cooper looked every bit his age in this film and, as Jimmy Stewart did in "Bell, Book, and Candle", Coop realized when he saw the film that this was his swan song as a romantic lead, and somewhat past its sell date, at that.



The filmmakers knew it too, and that is why the young Ariane is portrayed as the story's real sexual aggressor. Had Flannigan pursued the virginal, inexperienced Ariane that the audience really knows her to be, everyone would have been revolted, Cooper or no Cooper. And had Flannigan NOT been the millionaire that the audience and her father know him to be, that last scene on the train platform would never have taken place. How likely is it that Ariane's loving and protective father would have stood by as his only child was swept off in that manner by a man he himself has met only once, and whom he knows to have a long and dishonorable history with women?



For the record: the story is, of course, set in Paris. Private detective Claude Chavasse (Maurice Chevalier) is hired by Monsieur X (a quite funny John McGiver) to follow his wife, whom he suspects is having an affair with renowned American millionaire playboy, Frank Flannigan. When M.X learns that this is, indeed, the case, he pulls out a gun and tells Claude that he plans to break in on the two at Flannigans's suite at the Ritz, and shoot Flannigan. M.X is overheard by Claude's 18-year-old daughter, Ariane, who for years has been expertly rifling her father's files, which he believed he had kept carefully locked because of the sordid stories they contain. Ariane has particularly gobbled up the file on Flannigan, in whom she has developed a morbid interest. To her father, Ariane presents the placid face of a young and not very talented musician, but when his back is turned, instead of practicing the cello, she sinks dreamily back into the Flannigan Files.



When Ariane hears of M.X's plan, she decides to warn Flannigan, and heads off to his suite at the Ritz where, to the accompaniment of a group of gypsy musicians playing "Fascination", Flannigan entertains his conquests. Sure enough, M.X's wife is there, and, thanks to Ariane's warning, when M.X bursts in, he is mortified to find not his wife on the sofa with Flannigan, but Ariane wearing his wife's little black hat and veil. But Ariane herself has now caught Flannigan's interest, and fearing that if he knows of her mundane and inexperienced background, she will lose it, Ariane, like a Parisian Scheherezade, begins regaling Flannigan with her own romantic history, which are, in reality, all stories from her father's files, tales of affairs with bullfighters, barons, mountain climbers, bankers, etc.



Flannigan has to leave Paris and travel for business, but the following year he comes back to Paris, and Ariane is waiting for him with another set of fictional conquests of her own with which to amuse him. Throughout the film, despite Flannigan's clear amorous interest and Ariane's adoration of him, we are asked to believe that he never succeeds in actually seducing her. Ariane refuses even to tell him her name or anything about herself that might allow Flannigan to identify her, and, finally, hooked and desperate, Flannigan ironically hires Ariane's father to trace his elusive "Thin Girl".



As soon as Chavasse hears the long list of stories that Flannigan's mysterious lady has told him, and Flannigan's description of her, Ariane's father realizes who the lady is. He tells Flannigan the truth, and asks him not to break his daughter's young heart - "Such a little fish, Monsieur - throw her back into the water."



The touched and rueful Flannigan agrees to do so, and tells Ariane that he must leave again, without telling her that he now knows who she is. Ariane comes to the train station to see Flannigan off; reluctant to let him go she runs alongside the train prattling about her lovers even as it begins to pull out, but at the last moment, as unable to part with her as she is with him, Flannigan leans down and pulls Ariane up into the train, calling her by name, as her father watches from a corner of the station. The viewer hears Chevalier's voice informing the audience that Ariane and Flannigan are married.



The song "Fascination" plays throughout the film, the theme used by the ubiquitous gypsy musicians whose primary client Flannigan is when he stays in Paris. The film was written by Wilder and his fabled collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond, who also co-wrote Wilder's "The Apartment", and "Some Like It Hot" - both better films than this one, in this reviewer's opinion.



Hepburn, as always, is hypnotically charming - she gives Ariane an eccentric quality in an effort to offset the essentially sordid nature of her relationship with Flannigan. Chevalier is Chevalier, no more, no less, as Ariane's detective father. Cooper is the Great Movie Star doing a nice turn as the bemused object of Ariane's affections. Nevertheless, just as there were protests about how "miscast" Bogart was as the young Hepburn's love interest in "Sabrina", there were also murmurs about casting the 56-year-old Cooper as the romantic interest of Hepburn's incredibly young Ariane. She is supposed to be about 18 years old in this film, living at home with her father, never having had a serious boyfriend, let alone a love affair, and looks as fresh as with the dew still on her. Yet we are supposed to accept a chronological gap of nearly forty years between these two, without ever factoring in Flannigan's money.



The film is certainly sophisticated and funny in places, as we watch Ariane succeed with Flannigan by being elusive, where her more experienced rivals have failed to do so by throwing themselves at him. But these qualities do not disguise the unpleasant core of the film, which doesn't merely wink, but leers at the staggering age/experience chasm, and asks us to believe that it's all about love, and the nearly 60-year-old man's wealth has nothing to do with the 18-year-old's fascination with him, or her father's tame acceptance of her elopement with a manifestly dissolute serial womanizer.



The shallow veneer of "sophistication" that Wilder tried to apply to this film can't diguise that it is the same old aging Hollywood director's fantasy: the utterly adorable, unspoiled, gorgeous Young Thing who falls madly in love with the aging, experienced male. But even Wilder knew that without that bankroll behind his cinematic alter ego's sagging flesh, jowls, spotty hands, and balding head, no one would buy his fantasy. That Wilder nevertheless tried to have it both ways, and presented the story as if that bankroll was invisible to the audience, was either Wilder's own particular form of denial, or an expression of massive contempt for his audience.



Sorry - not buying.