Irma la Douce

Billy Wilder reunited the stars of his Oscar-winning The Apartment for this racy yet sweet 1963 sex comedy. Shirley MacLaine stars as Irma la Douce, a superstar streetwalker in yesteryear Paris, and Jack Lemmon is the rookie gendarme who loses his job when he arrests the local ladies of the evening and their clients (including his boss) and ends up becoming the most successful pimp in Paris—all in the same day. Wilder adapted the hit French stage musical with his regular collaborator I.A.L. Diamond, removing the songs and replacing them with the Wilder slyness and spoofing the sweetness bubbling under the colorful underworld of this Hollywood fantasy of Gay Paree. It’s like a farcical remake of The Apartment with Lemmon’s character pushed to even more extremes as a straight-laced innocent so jealous of his lover’s clients that he poses as one himself. Lou Jacobi is earthy yet somehow above it all as the philosophical barman who serves as narrator and master of ceremonies. Pushing the boundaries of bourgeois morality with a mix of ribald suggestion and fairy-tale innocence, Irma la Douce was a big hit that earned MacLaine an Oscar nomination. Presented with a new 4K scan, extras include separate audio commentary tracks from film historians Joseph McBride and Kat Ellinger. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)