Irma La Douce

Rating:
Summary: Comic masterpiece (part 2)
Review: "Irma la Douce" was Billy Wilder's biggest hit at the box-office. With its absurdly funny situations and its snappy dialogues it is perhaps the most anarchistic screenplay he and I.A.L Diamond have ever written. The stars were at the height of their artistic powers. Marguerite Monnot's tuneful score didn't hurt, either. And this is just the package. Audiences are always grateful when allowed to peep through key-holes and "Irma la Douce" was the first major Hollywood-production ever to deal with the subject of prostitution. Of course, there have been many women with a past, shady ladies, innocent girls gone astray or clever girls in search of a sugar-daddy. But never before has a leading actress been shown while haggling over the price or describing the strange predilections of her clients.

Wilder originally wanted Charles Laughton for the role of Moustache. Those who have seen him in "Witness for the prosecution" know what he could have done to this film and his co-stars. Wilder's initial choice for Irma was, as everybody knows Marilyn Monroe. Her memories fresh from "Some like it hot", she threw the role away. She would have been wonderful in the role. MacLaine however, is excellent in her own right. Her ultra-cool delivery of her lines make her a provocative foil for Lemmon.

Watching Lemmon's performance, many critics were reminded of the great comedians of the golden age. No wonder. One must be tied up to resist this lovestruck hero. The scene where he enters Irma's room for the very first time, sweetly hesitant, ill at ease, because he knows that in a few minutes he is going to make love to her - this scene alone would secure this film its place among the great romantic comedies.

Why then has this film been refused its place as a true classic? The problem with Irma is, that the story ends 20 minutes before the film does. We had our thrills, we had our laughs, and now the story forces Wilder to send after an ending that will satisfy the "little bourgeois" in us. It feels as if the film-presenter announces: Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed this film and now, as an extra, Mr. Lemmon will perform some acrobatics...he married during shooting, be indulgent.

Make your choice: enjoy "Irma" completely, including its anticlimactic ending, or miss one of the funniest films of all time. Spicy enough to send you from one fit of laughter to the next, innocent enough not to offend your maiden aunt or harm your (elder) children. This film captures the delightful atmosphere of Paris and bubbles and sparkles like champagne. If "Irma la Douce" can't cheer you up, no film can.

Rating:
Summary: This has been in my grandma's film library for years and...
Review: ...i didn't watch it until the thursday before last which was a mistake.the afi rated some like it hot as the funniest movie of all time but i thought this movie was a damn sight funnier then that.Lemmon gives the performance of his career and lord x is funnier then tom or jerry.Thin cigarettes usually freak me out but Shirley maclaine was curiously sexy in this movie and their has never been tougher screen pimp then Jack Lemmon not the Mack not Doctor Detroit not Anybody!

Rating:
Summary: Very Funny!
Review: A great story and script make this a wonderful movie to see. Jack Lemmon falls in love with Irma, a streetwalker played by Shirley MacLaine. To keep her off the streets, he begins to work four to five jobs at night to pose as a wealthy English lord. Of course things don't quite work out as he would like. Very funny movie by Billy Wilder, the same director as "Some Like It Hot".

A must see.

Darin

Rating:
Summary: Very Funny!
Review: A great story and script make this a wonderful movie to see. Jack Lemmon falls in love with Irma, a streetwalker played by Shirley MacLaine. To keep her off the streets, he begins to work four to five jobs at night to pose as a wealthy English lord. Of course things don't quite work out as he would like. Very funny movie by Billy Wilder, the same director as "Some Like It Hot".

A must see.

Darin

Rating:
Summary: deserves more reviews.
Review: an exceptional jack lemmon flick, so unfortunately passed up by many for more of his popular stuff. Jack is a cutiepie. loved it.

Rating:
Summary: The Honest Truth
Review: Before Terms of Endearment, there was Irma La Douce... Shirley Maclaine is at her most beautiful as well as her most hilarious! I have loved this movie for years and was thrilled to find that Amazon actually carried it. (You have no idea what how hard it was to find!) This film is a true classic and stands the test of time!

Rating:
Summary: tellement doux
Review: Ce n 'est pas un film , c'est de la poesie en images , la douceur de la vie , la peine et les joies de l' amour ... tout est la .

Rating:
Summary: Sweet Irma from Paris, Hollywood
Review: Irma La Douce is a curious film with a curious history. Originally a French musical, it was translated and tranferred to Broadway where it was a modest success. Hollywood liked the play's premise but not its songs so, when Billy Wilder came to make the film version, all the songs were dropped and it was done as a comedy (although some of the music was reworked by Andre Previn as themes for his background score).

The story is the stuff of farce. Jack Lemmon is a too honest policeman who gets fired for being overly zealous. He promptly falls in love with the cause of his misfortune - a prostitute played by Shirley MacLaine. Almost by accident, Lemmon becomes her pimp but he is so in love with her that he resents her clients. So he devises a scheme in which he impersonates a rich English lord who buys all of Irma's time. To pay for this, Lemmon must work all day while MacLaine sleeps. Before long, crazy with exhaustion and jealous of himself, he decides to do away with his alter ego. At which point he is arrested for the murder of someone who does not exist.

Amazingly, the film is not as funny as it might sound. Or, at least, it's not as funny as it might have been forty years ago. When it was released, Irma La Douce was quite a racy film. But now it seems rather tame and almost naive. And at nearly two and a half hours, there seems to be quite long gaps between highlights. It is probably a sacrilege to suggest Billy Wilder was slightly lacking his trademark golden touch. But much of the style and pacing of the film seems uncertain. The colors are so garish and unreal that you wonder if black and white might have suited the material better. The main sets are obvious sound stages yet the camera occasionally wanders into realistic locations, further confusing the look of the movie. And some more editing would have helped the film's pace.

Even so, there are a number of fun moments. Lemmon is always watchable, especially in the days before he began to take himself too seriously. His character of Nestor is right up there with some of his best. But his impersonation of the English lord is so broad and such a caricature that it blunts the intended humor. As Irma, Shirley MacLaine is bubbly and strangely sexy - just as she was in a whole series of silly films in the Sixties. Legend has it that she researched her role by hanging out with real Parisian prostitutes. She needn't have bothered as her Irma is the typical Hollywood tart with a heart of gold. The supporting cast - especially the girls - do their bits well enough. Trivia lovers will enjoy spotting a pre-Incredible Hulk Bill Bixby as a French sailor. Lou Jacobi, as the owner of the local bistro, gets most of the film's best lines. But that's another story...

Irma La Douce is an enjoyable enough comedy but everyone involved has done better work elsewhere. Still, it's a lot better than most of the more modern and allegedly more sophisticated "romantic comedies" made these days.

Rating:
Summary: irma la douce
Review: Is there another movie this great? My 90 year old grandfather and I are in total agreement about this hilariously wonderful film! Jack Lemmon and Shirley Mcclaine at their young and sweet best. It tops my all time favorite list.

Rating:
Summary: But that's another story . . .
Review: It's astounding. This is one of the funniest comedies ever made and few people have even heard of it.

Everyone's seen "Some Like it Hot" (I HOPE!) but even die-hard Billy Wilder fans have missed out on this one.

Like "The Apartment" it's co-written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine and is directed by the man himself.

There's one big difference, though. "The Apartment" has been justly acclaimed as a masterpiece of cinema, but despite what critics have written about it, it is NOT a 'romantic comedy.' It's a drama. A poignant love story with a happy ending.

This one's a screwball comedy. A first class farce.

But, that's another story . . .