Irma la Douce (1963)

One of Wilder's most divisive film's amongst his fans.

Adapted from Alexandre Breffort's stage musical, Irma la Douce in film form turns into something of a roller-coaster ride. Even allowing for the absence of the songs (a major gripe with purists), the film is far too bloated to really achieve the heights of being a great comedy classic. If it had been condensed to perhaps a 100 minute film then I think it could have achieved the splendour that some sequences hint at. As it is though, there is still much to enjoy, and nobody should be under the impression that this film isn't funny, because it is, but just how long can you stretch the joke Mr Wilder?

I think the chief thing that sticks out is just how did Wilder get such an overtly sexual farce past the censors? He pushes the boundary more than usual with this one, and I honestly would be surprised if he himself wasn't surprised to get away with so much cheeky sexual shenanigans. The sets are fabulous from Alexandre Trauner, and Andre Previn's score is perfect and in tune with the Parisian heart of the film, but the lead actors here are oddly not firing on all cylinders.

Jack Lemmon's hopeless romantic Nestor is the core humour character. A character who becomes jealous of himself! His transformation into an English fop is hilarious at first, but on, and on, and on it goes till the joke becomes a heavy weight on the film's shoulders. Lemmon is fine, he's just the victim of over ambition from Wilder. Shirley MacLaine is the title character and it doesn't quite come off, sure she gives it gusto and she looks fabulous (as always), but the role cried out for a more cosmopolitan actress, and this again comes down to Wilder losing site of things with this particular project.

It's a safe recommend for Lemmon fans, but for Wilder worshippers such as me the problems are evident in spite the film being his highest grossing film of the decade. A cautionary 7/10.

I love the first half hour of this film. It's all about the fastidious policeman "Patou" (Jack Lemmon) who is unwittingly transferred into a Parisian red light district where he encounters the eponymous hooker (Shirley MacLaine) plying her trade with her little dog. He smells a rat and immediately calls for a police raid on the hotel in which she works. Bad mistake! Not least because one of his bosses is enjoying the hospitality of the house - so he gets fired. Now pretty much resident in the café of "Moustache" (Lou Jacobi) across from her workplace, he becomes increasingly frustrated that this woman that he is now enamoured of is still working, so he concocts a cunning plan to adopt the identity of a visiting British lord and to woo her into a relationship that's exclusive. Initially this is a success - paid for by borrowed money from his new best friend, but when "Moustache" starts to want repaying, "Patou" has to start working overnight in the adjacent meat market and his burning of the candles at both ends soon causes consternation with "Irma". Eventually he concludes that his lordly lark isn't sustainable and so fakes his suicide. The razor-sharp mind of "Insp. Lefevre" (Herschel Bernardi) takes a different view though, and soon "Patou" in in jail for murder! Now he has to escape, prove his innocence (quite innovatively as it happens) and hope that his gal hasn't got bored of all of these shenanigans and found true love elsewhere. MacLaine puts her heart and soul into this - dancing, teasing and playing the game for all it's worth - and she's entertaining to boot. Lemmon was never my favourite comedy actor, but here he uses her and a strong screenplay from Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond to create an engaging character that, for the most part, manages to stay on the right side of farce as the plot proceeds from the sublime to the ridiculous. It does drag a little in the middle, and the preposterous does start to overwhelm it then too, but it rebounds well for a last half hour of quirky, entertaining cinema with a twist in its tail.