Irma La Douce *** (1963, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Lou Jacobi) – Classic Movie Review 3676

Director Billy Wilder makes the bold decision to film a musical by dumping all the original popular Broadway show’s songs for his 1963 comedy Irma La Douce. Apparently he did not feel comfortable staging song and dance numbers.

Maybe that is a mistake, and so is his unresolved problem with an overlong running time at a massive 146 minutes, a recurring difficulty that happened several times in his illustrious career.

Otherwise all is shipshape with this risqué, saucy story of the naive, upright Paris police officer Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon) who is transferred to the Red Light district and organizes a raid on a brothel.

Unfortunately, his station superior is arrested along with the woman at the brothel and Nestor is fired, He goes to a bar to drink and is befriended by one of the prostitutes called Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine), whom he soon falls for.

He then finds that he is now Irma’s new pimp but becomes jealous of her other clients and so he comes up with a plan to disguise himself as an English lord – Lord X – so that he can be her sole client.

The performances are immaculate and endearing, the story is fetching and appealing, and art director Alexander Trauner’s studio sets of Paris by night are rather special, and it is an attractive looking movie shot in Technicolor. André Previn won an Oscar for the Best Scoring of Music. MacLaine was Oscar nominated as Best Actress and Joseph LaShelle was Oscar nominated for Best Colour Cinematography.

Okay, so it is not absolutely top Billy Wilder, and certainly not another The Apartment (1960) either, despite the re-convening of its stars and director, but it will have to do.

James Caan has a walk-on in his debut. Also in the cast are Lou Jacobi as Moustache, Herschel Bernardi as Inspector Lefevre, Joan Shawlee as Amazon Annie, Bruce Yarnell as Hippolyte and Hope Holiday as Lolita, with Grace Lee Whitney, Paul Dubov, Howard McNear, Bill Bixby and Cliff Osmond.

MacLaine signed on without having read the script, which she then disliked, and later judged the film ‘crude and clumsy’. Before filming, she went to Paris to see what it was like for real Parisian prostitutes.

Wilder wanted Marilyn Monroe to star and Charles Laughton to play Moustache but both died before filming.

The Rue Casanova set cost $350,000 out of the film’s total budget of $5,000,000 and took three months to build, with 48 buildings and three streets.

When Lemmon married Felicia Farr in Paris during the shoot, Wilder and director Richard Quine were joint best men.

The original Broadway musical production opened at the Plymouth Theater on 29 September 1960, ran for 524 performances and won the 1961 Tony Award for Elizabeth Seal in the title role.

All of Marguerite Monnot’s Broadway songs were dumped, though ‘Our Language of Love’ became the film’s theme tune.

Lemmon had to be given several immunization shots for his scene to emerge from the then polluted River Seine. He named it the most disgusting thing he had to do in a film.

It was shot in the studio at Samuel Goldwyn Studios, 7200 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, California.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3676

Check out more reviews on derekwinnert.com

Irma La Douce (1963) with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.