After the whitewashed film version of The Seven Year Itch and the uninspired Spirit of St. Louis, Billy Wilder is now experimenting in the sophisticated and whimsical realm of Continental comedy [in Love in the Afternoon]. This is the story of an aged American viveur who becomes involved in a series of afternoon sexual affairs with the daughter of a private detective in Paris. It is not particularly "explosive," to be sure, but at times the director manages to sketch an interestingly sarcastic portrait of a lonely man—a man who slavishly indulges in fine foods and wines, in the jaded atmosphere of the Grand Hotel, in languid lights and soft music, and a man who is capable of celebrating his bedroom exploits with the smoothest of ease. He is presented as an appendix of the Golden Era of the past century.

The sardonic vein that is carefully...