Irma La Douce
Appearing on Blu-ray as part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema range with a splash of jade green comes Billy Wilder’s 1963 farcical comedy Irma La Douce starring Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. Based on a 1956 French stage musical written by Marguerite Monnot and Alexandre Breffort, it would be Wilder’s last film to achieve any great popular success though he would go on to direct a further seven films over the next eighteen years to diminishing box office returns and critical receptions.
Notwithstanding the film’s lengthy time the story is fairly simple: set in then-contemporary Paris, Irma (MacLaine) is one of many streetwalkers based outside the Hotel Casanova, though she differentiates herself from all the other girls by always wearing items of jade green clothing, particularly stockings.
A new and zealous young police officer, Nestor Patou (Lemmon), is assigned to the area and decides to clean up the streets, blithely oblivious to the existing arrangements in place with the local police chief. He is summarily expelled from the force and, having formed a connection with Irma during her arrest, turns to her for help and she takes him into her small apartment and the two soon fall in love.
After besting her pimp Hippolyte (Bruce Yarnell) in a fist fight, Patou resorts to subterfuge to keep Irma exclusive to him. With the aid of the local bar owner known as “Moustache” he disguises himself as “Lord X,” an English aristocrat who becomes Irma’s sole client.
Unfortunately this charade cannot be sustained and following his attempt to be rid of Lord X by throwing his costume into the river Seine, Nestor then finds himself arrested for the murder but escapes from prison and overturns his conviction by appearing as Lord X to the police. By this time Irma is pregnant and they marry just before she gives birth.
Shot mainly in a hyper-realistic studio set with occasional forays onto location, Irma La Douce is a triumph of art design and performance. Faithful big-screen adaptations of stage plays were very popular in the early sixties, hence the two hour and twenty-seven minute running time and studio-bound nature of the film.
Wilder had already worked with Lemmon and MacLaine in The Apartment in 1960 which was enormously successful, both were already bona fide stars, and their chemistry contributes to the success of Irma La Douce as a romantic comedy. MacLaine had a very solid body of work behind her and had recently starred in the controversial and intense drama The Children’s Hour. She had a somewhat spiky screen persona which takes the edge off the otherwise standard-issue “tart-with-a-heart” that Irma could so easily have been.
Lemmon was a considerable screen comedy actor and had previously starred for Wilder in Some Like it Hot and would become the director’s leading man of choice, making a further four films with him, none of which would match their earlier successes. Not stars at the time, the film also features early roles for Grace Lee Whitney, Bill Bixby and James Caan.
Wilder’s favourite actor of all, however, was Charles Laughton with whom he had made Witness For The Prosecution in 1957 and for whom his esteem knew no bounds; Laughton had worked on the character of Moustache during preparations for Irma La Douce but he was terminally ill and unable to take part in filming so he character was brought to life by Lou Jacobi instead.
Moustache was not the only part recast, with Irma herself having originally been intended as a role which would reunite Marilyn Monroe with her director on Some Like it Hot. More successful was the reunion with composer André Previn whom Wilder had worked on the previous year on One, Two, Three, here adapting Monnot’s stage score.
To modern eyes, Irma La Douce looks stagy, talky and studio-bound but Lemmon and MacLaine’s sheer watchability make it sufficiently entertaining as a period piece, even though it’s hard to believe that MacLaine’s sassy streetwise character would be so easily taken in by Lemmon’s disguise as Lord X.
Restored in 4K for Eureka’s edition, the film is accompanied on this release by two separate audio commentaries by film historians Kat Ellinger and Joseph McBride and the disc also features a comprehensive discussion piece by film writer and academic Neil Sinyard.
Irma La Douce is available on Blu-ray now from Eureka as part of their Masters of Cinema series
