Love in the Afternoon is a 1957 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, and Maurice Chevalier.

The story explores the relationship between a notorious middle-aged American playboy business magnate and the 20-something daughter of a private detective hired to investigate him.

Ariane's father, who has tried unsuccessfully to protect her from knowing about the tawdry domestic-surveillance details in his files, notices her change of mood but has no idea that it proceeds from one of his cases.

This time, when he persists in his questioning, she makes up a long list of prior imaginary lovers based on her father's files, later telling Flannagan that he is her 20th.

When Ariane comes to his hotel suite that afternoon, Flannagan is hurriedly packing to leave Paris, pretending to be on his way to meet "two crazy Swedish twins" in Cannes.

[5] The director decided to cast Gary Cooper because they shared similar tastes and interests and Wilder knew the actor would be good company during location filming in Paris.

[5] Talent agent Paul Kohner suggested Maurice Chevalier for the role of Claude Chavasse, and when asked if he was interested, the actor replied, "I would give the secret recipe for my grandmother's bouillabaisse to be in a Billy Wilder picture".

[7][8] For the American release of the film, Chevalier recorded an end-of-film narration letting audiences know Ariane and Flannagan had married and were living in New York City.

A four-piece band of musicians called "The Gypsies" entertains Flannagan and his various lovers in his hotel suite, since Frank says he's "not much of a talker" and lets music create the romance.

The Gypsies stick with Flannagan through thick and thin, serenading him as he drowns his sorrows in drink while listening to Ariane's recording of her long list of lovers, joining him in a Turkish bath, and following him to the train station.

[5] Matty Malneck, Wilder's friend from their Paul Whiteman days in Vienna, wrote three songs for the film, including the title tune.

Also heard are "C'est si bon" by Henri Betti, "L'ame Des Poètes" by Charles Trenet, and "Fascination", a 1932 song based on a European waltz,[2] which is hummed repeatedly by Ariane.

[10] The debt Allied Artists incurred while making Friendly Persuasion prompted the studio to sell the distribution rights of Love in the Afternoon for Europe to gain more financing.

[5] In his 1957 review, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the film a "grandly sophisticated romance ... in the great Lubitsch tradition" and added, "Like most of Lubitsch's chefs-d'oeuvre [masterpieces], it is a gossamer sort of thing, so far as a literary story and a substantial moral are concerned ... Mr. Wilder employs a distinctive style of subtle sophisticated slapstick to give the fizz to his brand of champagne ...

[13] John Fawell wrote in 2008 that "Lubitsch was at his most imaginative when he lingered outside of doorways, particularly when something promiscuous was going on behind the door, a habit his pupil Billy Wilder picked up.

"[14] In an undated and unsigned review, TV Guide observes that the film has "the winsome charm of Hepburn, the elfin puckishness of Chevalier, a literate script by Wilder and Diamond, and an airy feeling that wafted the audience along," but felt it was let down by Gary Cooper, who "was pushing 56 at the time and looking too long in the tooth to be playing opposite the gamine Hepburn ... With little competition from the wooden Cooper, the picture is stolen by Chevalier's bravura turn".

"[15] In her film analysis, Marilyn Throne calls the script an exposure of the myth of "the girl-virgin as the seductress of the worldly and successful American male".

Throne notes that the character of Ariane is surrounded by men—including her father—who all affirm and support the prerogative of men to philander and flirt, while women are expected to remain chaste.