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Simply A Masterpiece

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

At two and a half hours, Billy Wilder's soufflé falls flatter than a crepe in this laborious comedy about a naive ex-cop and a hooker with a heart of gold.The snail-paced story dies fast as the plot plods along. Jack Lemmon is the ex-cop who ends up as a pimp to Shirley MacLaine's Irma la Douce, a Parisian prostitute. He falls in love with her and decides the only way to have her to himself is to disguise himself as a rich British lord who pays her only to play cards. To earn the money to pay her, he works nights in a meat market schlepping huge slabs of meat.Eventually he decides, with the help of the local bar owner (Lou Jacobi) he hatches a plan to "kill off" the lord and go straight. When he symbolically throws the disguise (which isn't very good) into the Seine, his rival pimp sees him and reports the murder of the lord. From there, the plot churns on for another 30 minutes to resolve the situation.Comedy needs quick pacing; farce needs even sharper pacing. If it lumbers along as this film does, the spark simply dies out, leaving a fizzled pile of ashes.MacLaine and Lemmon try hard, but it just doesn't work. Jacobi becomes annoying, and even his final "to the audience" line is a dud. Among the co-stars are Bruce Yarnell as Ox, Herschel Bernardi as the police inspector, Joan Shawlee as the Amazon, Grace Lee Whitney as Kiki, Hope Holiday as Lolita, Cliff Osmond as the police sergeant, and Howard McNear as the concierge. Brief bits by James Caan and Bill Bixby.

Jack Lemmon plays a naive policeman who upsets the apple cart when he leads a raid on a house of ill repute. In the process, he disrupts the balance of trade among the police and the prostitutes and their pimps. Once he beats up Shirley MacLain's pimp, it fall on him to replace the guy. Soon, he has to walk a tightrope to keep his job and care for the woman he has fallen in love with. Shirley is dynamite as Irma and she presents quite a challenge to his moral sense. Something must happen for him to remove himself from suspicion. I have to say that the conclusion to this film is one of the most satisfying I've seen. Don't miss it. It is one of Billy Wilder's outstanding efforts.

This odd morality play about an honest cop who is fired for doing his job, and who then gets involved with a streetwalker and gets a lesson in ethics from the other side of the law, was a surprise flop for the usually reliable Billy Wilder, but viewed now there is still quite a lot for his fans to enjoy. The subject matter is given a highly sanitized treatment, as one would expect for 1963, and some of the scenes seem studio-bound (although the early montage showing Paris at five in the morning is a real cinematic treat.) I liked the look of the movie, however, with its big MGM soundstage sets and some great tracking shots, especially along Rue Casanova, where the girls work their trade. Plus, the dialogue has some very sharp moments with wryly worded sexy jokes that nonetheless passed the production code, and there are a few bits of well-staged physical comedy, as one would expect with Jack Lemmon. Nonetheless, there is a contrived air to everything that makes it impossible to suspend disbelief and immerse oneself in the drama. Part of the problem lies with Shirley MacLaine, who, as the woman with the flipped over sense of morality, gives a likable but not entirely natural performance. There are some false moments in her portrayal. You get the feeling that she was less than 100% convinced of the character's world view and thus fails to completely convince the audience. A different actress, Jane Fonda maybe, or a few different choices by La MacLaine might have gone further to sell the picture's odd moral message. Not all of the false notes in the picture are her doing, of course. Everything is a little too Big Hollywood, plus the high farce second half of the movie is too far-fetched to create a truly compelling entertainment, and for every well-staged bit of physical comedy there is another bit that that comes of as forced.I would recommend this movie to fans of Billy Wilder, to fans of old school MGM movie-making and to Jack Lemmon fans, but anybody looking for a movie to really submerge oneself in will likely be disappointed.

Among the street people of Paris, there is a saying, 'it costs nothing to hate, but if you wish to make love, it will cost you thirty franks.' The movie "Irma La Douce" meaning, 'Irma the sweet' stems from an original play by Alex Breflort and is adroitly directed by the great Billy Wilder. It tells the story of Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon) a young idealistic French Policeman, who gets transferred to the 'Red Light' district of Paris France. Unaware of the established economic system between the police and the street prostitutes, he naively orders a raid and among the many surprised clients arrested, Nestor discovers his own boss. Fired from his job, he becomes a pimp for his girlfriend called Irma (Shirley MacLaine). Learning her work involves prostitution, he arranges to become her only client. This creates the Topsy-turvy world which includes the mysterious Lord X. Lou Jacobi is 'Moustache' who explains to the audience how silly a situation can become when plucking chickens. A superior film and one which has become a definite Classic. ****