Irma la Douce. 1963 The Mirisch Corporation & United Artists; distributed to DVD by MGM.
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Lou Jacobi
Director: Billy Wilder
Buy Irma la Douce at Amazon. Also part of the Billy Wilder DVD Collection.
Billy Wilder directed the film adaptation of the stage musical of the same name. Wilder opted to film his project as a straight comedy as he was not comfortable staging scenes with singing and dancing. He also originally wanted Marilyn Monroe (who died before production began) or Elizabeth Taylor for the role of Irma. Taylor lost out because the director did not want to deal with the publicity surrounding her relationship with Richard Burton at the time.
Nestor Patou (Lemmon) is an honest policeman working in Paris, and somehow, he has a straight American dialect. He finds a street full of prostitutes, and reports them to his supervisor, who is aware of the women, but has been letting them off in exchange for bribes. Nestor is instead fired for his report. While getting his drink on at a local bar, Nestor becomes close to Irma la Dolce (MacLaine), a popular prostitute. She soon dumps her pimp boyfriend, and Nestor moves in with her, and soon enough, he has become Irma's new pimp. Nestor becomes jealous of the thought of Irma involved with other men, so he plans to stop her prostitution (posing as the Englishman "Lord X"), but this plot backfires, and Irma becomes suspicious of Nestor, even preferring the company of his alter ego!
Recommended movie.
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