Director's Series: Billy Wilder's IRMA LA DOUCE

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, it appears that Billy Wilder was interested in 2 things:

1). Making movies about the relationship between men and women

2). Pushing the boundaries of censorship as far as he could

And with SOME LIKE IT HOT, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and his Academy Award winning film THE APARTMENT, he certainly accomplished both items.

For his next film, he had to go to France, for the title character of his 1963 film, IRMA LA DOUCE, is a prostitute.

Originally a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe, Wilder, instead, was “forced” to cast THE APARTMENT star Shirley MacLaine (due to Monroe’s death) in the title role which reunited her with Wilder and her THE APARTMENT co-star Jack Lemmon.

And, what a stroke of luck that (probably) turned out to be. One will never know what the performance of Monroe would have been but MacLaine is pitch perfect as the street-corner hanging Parisian, the titular IRMA LA DOUCE, who just has a job to do and so she does it…and does it well.

Which the American censors weren’t too keen about, but since the film is sent in France (and not the good ol’ U.S. of A.), they let it pass.

Into Irma’s life walks erstwhile Policeman Jack Lemmon who does not have nearly enough practicality and openness as the rest of France when it comes to prostitution and promptly arrests MacLaine and her cohorts. This results in Lemmon being fired by the police department and (due to screenplay reasons) ends up becoming MacLaines pimp - a pimp who needs Irma to earn the money, but a pimp who doesn’t want her to earn the money “that way”.

Such is the machinations of romantic comedies.

Based on a 1956 French musical, Wilder immediately took all of the musical numbers out of the film (he said he didn’t know how nor did he WANT to know how to make a musical) and, to be honest, this film suffers for it. You can see the parts of the film where the cast would have burst into song and breathe some life into it. Without it, the scenes are overly long and fail to land more often than not.

This is NOT the fault of Lemmon and MacLaine who prove that their chemistry in The Apartment was not a fluke. They are TERRIFIC together and are a couple you are rooting for (even if the romantic comedy tropes of this film seem to really stretch credulity).

Lou Jacobi (who was supposed to play Dr. Dreyfuss in The Apartment, the part that Jack Kruschen ened up being nominated for an Oscar for, but had to drop out of that film due to other obligations) is strong as Lemmon’s scheming partner, Moustache, while the rest of the characters are well cast, if thinly written (look closely for a “blink and you’ll miss it” turn from a very young James Caan in his film debut).

But, ultimately, this film sags under the length of the dialogue-heavy (note I did not say dialogue-RICH) extremely long scenes that could have used musical numbers - if only someone would make a movie of that version of Irma La Douce.

Letter Grade: B- (it is a Billy Wilder film with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine after all)

6 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)