Irma la Douce

When I first saw Irma La Douce as much as I liked it, I was puzzled by the fact that Billy Wilder had chosen to do this hit musical without any songs in it. Very much like Fanny from a few years ago which also had a French setting and came to the screen without its score. The Broadway cast album was a staple in my house and I certainly enjoyed the songs that Keith Mitchell and Elizabeth Seal and the rest of the cast did on Broadway.

What made it more puzzling was the presence of Bruce Yarnell in the movie cast, the possessor of a really nice baritone voice, he played opposite Ethel Merman in the Lincoln Center revival of Annie Get Your Gun. That together with the fact Shirley MacLaine first made her mark in musical roles, in fact she had starred in the screen version of Can-Can the two years before.

Well, according to the recent biography of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov in fact this film started out as a musical. Somewhere there is some footage of MacLaine, Yarnell, possibly even Jack Lemmon and Lou Jacobi doing some musical numbers lying in a vault somewhere. Wilder said he thought the numbers slowed the pace of the story and midpoint in the film he just scrapped what he had shot and didn't bother with the rest.

Personally I wish he had kept the numbers in, maybe it would have made Irma La Douce run too long. Who knows maybe we'll get to see them some day.

Shirley MacLaine got an Oscar nomination for her performance in the title role. She's a good natured working girl who has the misfortune to get busted by the one cop in Paris who is not winking at prostitution on his first day on his new beat. That would be Jack Lemmon who for his honest law enforcement gets himself fired.

That far from ends it as Lemmon falls for MacLaine and like he did in The Apartment sees himself as her savior. The rest of the film is the ridiculous lengths Lemmon goes to save MacLaine from her life of sin and debauchery.

His one confidante is Lou Jacobi who plays Moustache the owner of a local bistro where the girls and their mecs(that's French for pimp) hang out. His role was originally intended for Charles Laughton.

Billy Wilder has a well deserved reputation as a cynical observer of humankind and had some run ins with several Hollywood greats. But he became an unabashed admirer of Charles Laughton after working with him on Witness for the Prosecution. The tenderest part of that Wilder biography tells about how Wilder kept visiting Laughton up to the end discussing the part with both of them knowing it was never to be. Yet I wish Laughton had lived to do the part. It would really have been special.

Bruce Yarnell's part is that of MacLaine's mec. His career too was tragically cut short by a plane crash that he was killed in later in the decade. Terrific voice, nice screen and stage presence, what a terrible thing to happen.

Though I would have liked to have seen the musical, I can't fault Billy Wilder's production of Irma La Douce. The fact that this came to the screen at all was further demonstration of the Code finally being lifted from the backs of the creative.

Maybe we will see a full blown musical adaptation of Irma La Douce some day. But that's another story.

So it's not the greatest Billy Wilder/Jack Lemmon comedy ever, but it's definitely a very amusing film with witty performances from Jack Lemmon and Shirly McLaine who prove here once again what a believable, great screen couple they make. The scene stealer in this one, though, is Lou Jacobi as Moustache, the hilarious and "wise" bartender across the street. The film loses some of its humor at somes places, but it really takes off the moment Jack becomes Lord X. The music is a great asset, too.

This film is Billy Wilder's rewriting of Alexandre Breffort's French musical farce. In 1960, David Merrick brought an English version of the piece to the United States. This Brechtian play concerned penniless law student Nestor le Fripe and his jealous love for his prostitute girl friend, Irma. He disguises himself as Monsieur Oscar and becomes her only client. When he becomes jealous of Oscar, he pretends to murder the fake client. He is assisted in this scheme by Bob, a bartender who also serves as a narrator of sorts.

Wilder keeps the basic idea of the play, but turns le Fripe, now Nestor Patou, into a policeman who falls for Irma. Bob becomes known as Moustache and Monnot's songs are used only for background music. In the leading roles, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Lou Jacobi, Hershel Bernardi and Bruce Yarnell are as French as French fries. Wilder injects the farce with his usual cynical romanticism. The shame is that all of the leading players had musical comedy backgrounds and could have put across the musical numbers with style. Wilder did not have to use all 14 musical numbers, but 2 or 3 would have made the point. There is no reason why Jacobi could not have opened the film with "Valse Milieu". The "Dis-donc" number is almost performed by Shirley MacLaine in the film; why wasn't it done? Jack Lemmon could have crooned "Our Language of Love" to Shirley in the early bedroom scene. Maybe Wilder felt that the music would take the bite out the his film. It would have, but it would have made the film warmer. Thank goodness Wilder decided to include some silly slapstick to lighten the piece a bit.

When I first saw this film, I was disappointed in it, but after a few more viewings, it stands up well against Wilder's other cynical-romantic comedies of this era. And it is the only one in color!

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.

A policeman, Nestor, falls in love with a prostitute, Irma, but doesn't want her seeing other men. So he creates an alter-ego, a wealthy Englishman, Lord X, who will be her only customer. Seems like a solid enough plan...to him. What could possibly go wrong?

Directed by the great Billy Wilder and written by Wilder and his long-time collaborator I. A. L. Diamond this has all the usual Wilder comedy trademarks: a warm, light-hearted story with intelligent humour and some great one-liners. The subject matter is but more risqué than usual, and would have been pushing the envelope a bit in 1963, but even then Wilder turns the film into something beautiful and funny rather than seedy or salacious.

Another factor is the performances. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine were brilliant together in Wilder's 1960 masterpiece "The Apartment" (which for me is his greatest work). Three years, and two Wilder films, later Wilder pairs them together for this film and the effect is no less spectacular.

Both are perfectly cast and give superb performances. Lemmon is great as Nestor, using his great physical comedy skills to great effect. MacLaine is wonderful as Irma, somehow seeming innocent and fragile while playing a cynical prostitute. She got a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.

On a trivia note, watch out for James Caan in his debut performance. He only has about 30 seconds of screentime and one line and goes uncredited.

On the negative side, the film does threaten to degenerate into farce at many points in time. I thought "this is going somewhere silly" on several occasions but to Wilder's credit he pulls it back from the brink on every occasion.

Wilder also doesn't seem to know when to end the story. He overplayed and overextended the Lord X persona too long: it seemed to have reached its natural endpoint but he then kept going with it.

Overall, a great comedy.