Irma la Douce (1963)

Jack Lemon. What a natural. What an actor. Shirley MacLaine also very good. This film with all its convoluted twists and turns and knots and what not, has a beautiful love story at the center of it. It appears to be incredibly sweet, and touching, all the while supplying good comic relief, in particular with that bartender character and his insane anecdotes where he's been in every corner of the world and back, very good stuff - and the film does really well at developing lots of content in a plot that is fairly simple...but - and there's a big but (and I cannot lie) - it lingers for too long to a point where the viewer is ready to indulge and buy into the film's surrealistic plot for a while... but then it exaggerates just too much and a growing sense of silliness starts spilling out of it. In that, it's also too long: nearly two hours and thirty minutes, for such a cute, light story there's no reason whatsoever for that length.Could've been better as a shorter, more focused, less leaky story.Good stuff still. 7/10.

Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon) is a by-the-book cop. He used to police a children's park. After rescuing a child, he's transferred to the prostitute-filled Paris streets. He is taken with Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine) but is shocked to realize she's a prostitute. He calls in a raid on Hotel Casanova. It pulls in the wrong man and he is kicked off the force. He finds solace with Moustache (Lou Jacobi) who owns Chez Moustache. He wins in a fight against Irma's crude boyfriend Hippolyte. She takes him as her new boyfriend/pimp but he has a crazy plan to monopolize her time as new client British Lord X. He wears himself out earning enough money to pay her and keep up the pretense.The trio of Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon, and Shirley MacLaine delivers a fun loopy love story. MacLaine is a real wildcat. Lemmon has the humanity and the madcap insanity. Two and a half hours is a long running time for a comedy. The second half feels a little long. I would have preferred Wilder figure a way to end this sooner.

I love Billy Wilder, but boy is Irma la Douce a mess...The biggest issues are the length and the confused tone. This film should have been an hour and forty-five minutes tops; two and a half hours with few laughs or charm to offer the audience is just torture. And then there is the issue of the tone. The film does not know what it is: a sexual farce? A romantic comedy? A romantic dramedy? I don't know, and I don't believe the movie knows either! The first hour is full of good things: MacLaine and Lemmon have chemistry and while none of the comedy is particularly hilarious, it is witty and fun for what it is. But the moment we get to the second hour, Lemmon's characterization changes in a most improbable manner and the "funny" parts all fall flat. And did I mention the unnecessarily long run time? The one saving grace of the picture is MacLaine's performance as the titular prostitute, whose lust for life equals her sense of world weariness and soulful poignancy.It's worth one viewing, but it's hard to recommend it to anyone outside of the Wilder, Lemmon, or MacLaine fan base.

A sweet street soliciting girl of the Red Light District in Paris (the delightful Shirley MacLaine) meets a young and naive police officer (Jack Lemmon) who becomes her new pimp after a big turmoil in which he arrested all the "girls" thus spoiling the understanding in force between the police and the pimps union. Because of that he is expelled from the police on a false accusation of bribery, returns to the Red Light District, has a comic fight with Irma's current pimp, defeats him with much luck and replaces him. But since he has fallen in love with Irma he's not happy seeing her going with other men all the time while practicing her "profession". Therefore he concocts a plan with the help of a friendly bar owner (Lou Jacobi) to take her off the street and disguises himself as an English lord who as a "client" keeps Irma busy for hours playing cards with him under a generous payment with money he earns by hard work in a market at night while her is asleep to prevent her of becoming aware of the whole situation. But from then on the story gets complicated and unfolds itself in a series of funny episodes and varied gags to which we cannot demand logic or likelihood since we are in the presence of a comedy. The performance of both main protagonists is brilliant and the movie is quite enjoyable.