Half of Acting is Casting

Half of acting is casting. Cast the right people, and the mise en scene provided by the bodies in a film will support the narrative and thematic content of the film, just as surely as the wrong casting will kill the film.

At the time of Love in the Afternoon (1957), also known as Ariane, Gary Cooper was 56 years old, against Audrey Hepburns' 27 years. Maurice Chevalier, playing father to Ariane/Audrey was 68, but appears around the same age as Cooper.

Of course actors play within an age range, their characters being more or less their own age. But Gary Cooper looks a very old 56. And Audrey Hepburn didn't look older than an adolescent until well after this film! In the 1950s many romantic comedies show women falling for older men, but it is something of a problem here.

To get around this, alhough the film is set in the afternoons, very rarely do we see Gary Cooper in full light - the curtains are drawn, as in this poster.

Here are some stills from an early scene in the movie, that illustrate how to lower an actor's age range:

Put him in the dark.