When a naive policeman falls in love with a prostitute, he doesn’t want her seeing other men and creates an alter ego who’s to be her only customer.
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Reviews
There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Jack Lemmon plays a naive policeman who upsets the apple cart when he leads a raid on a house of ill repute. In the process, he disrupts the balance of trade among the police and the prostitutes and their pimps. Once he beats up Shirley MacLain's pimp, it fall on him to replace the guy. Soon, he has to walk a tightrope to keep his job and care for the woman he has fallen in love with. Shirley is dynamite as Irma and she presents quite a challenge to his moral sense. Something must happen for him to remove himself from suspicion. I have to say that the conclusion to this film is one of the most satisfying I've seen. Don't miss it. It is one of Billy Wilder's outstanding efforts.
I love Billy Wilder, but boy is Irma la Douce a mess...The biggest issues are the length and the confused tone. This film should have been an hour and forty-five minutes tops; two and a half hours with few laughs or charm to offer the audience is just torture. And then there is the issue of the tone. The film does not know what it is: a sexual farce? A romantic comedy? A romantic dramedy? I don't know, and I don't believe the movie knows either! The first hour is full of good things: MacLaine and Lemmon have chemistry and while none of the comedy is particularly hilarious, it is witty and fun for what it is. But the moment we get to the second hour, Lemmon's characterization changes in a most improbable manner and the "funny" parts all fall flat. And did I mention the unnecessarily long run time? The one saving grace of the picture is MacLaine's performance as the titular prostitute, whose lust for life equals her sense of world weariness and soulful poignancy.It's worth one viewing, but it's hard to recommend it to anyone outside of the Wilder, Lemmon, or MacLaine fan base.
This film was written and directed by genius, Billy Wilder. This film is not one of his finest but it's worth watching with Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine in it. Shirley plays the title role of a Parisian street walker with a poodle named Coquette who has kidney stones and drinks a little. Anyway, Lemmon's played Nestor, an honest policeman who raids the Hotel Casanova. While he thinks he will get a medal, his boss fires him for the raid. Anyway, the film is about prostitution in a light-hearted manner even in the 1960s. Irma invites Nestor to come and stay with her since he's jobless and homeless in her apartment. Anyway, Irma likes the color green and even wears green stockings. There is a lot of humor in this film if you watch all of it. Lou Jacobi is wonderful as the Mustache who helps Nestor land his dream girl.
after "some like it hot" and "the apartment",i headed for this title just because i believed in Wilder and Lemmon and turned out i wasn't wrong! Lemmon acting is awesome as always. Shirley MacLaine is wonderful. Lemmon shows his talent again with playing in 2 different character. the movie made me laugh about most of the whole time.the movie has a long duration but because of being enjoyable,you can't feel the time.in my point of view this is a third best comedy of Wilder/Lemmon comedies , after some like it hot and the apartment.the bottom line is: if you seen other Wilder and Lemmon movies and you enjoyed,don't miss this! seriously!