So this is a movie by Billy Wilder, who you will remember from such films as Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, and Some Like It Hot. But maybe most relevantly, Sabrina, because this one also features a young Audrey Hepburn falling in love with an ancient Hollywood icon decades older than her (Gary Cooper this time).

In its barest outline, the story is dead-simple: Hepburn is the daughter of a private investigator, who is following around a client’s wife, and finds that she’s having an affair with notorious rake Gary Cooper. The husband is all going to kill Coop, but Hepburn overhears him talking to her dad about it, and goes to warn him. She keeps him from getting shot in a clever little misdirection scene, and then she has her own affair with him. But since he’s such a rake, she affects to be one as well. But will it turn out that despite trying to play it casual, they end up having real emotions for each other?!? Yes, it will.

But the script is great, with lots of witty dialogue and funny scenes. (This Billy Wilder fellow might end up really amounting to something, mark my words.) It’s not really convincing as a psychologically realistic love story — these two end up with a bitter break-up in like two months, tops — but as an Old Hollywood romance, it’s aces.