You might recognize her from her black dress, her green stockings matching a blouse of the same color, and a little poodle named 'Coquette'. She uses to hang out in a bar across Rue Casanova in Les Halles, Paris, owned by the jovial and friendly Moustache. And one last detail, not the least, she's the most popular prostitute out there. She's Irma La Douce or the Sweet in Shakespeare's language.
And sweet is an understatement, for there is something irresistible in Shirley Mac Laine's performance as Irma, making her profession harder to understand for her customers, as for us
well, not quite so: as movie viewers, we know prostitutes always hide a softer and sweeter soul behind their sordid occupation, but the film doesn't treat the subject with unnecessary gravity anyway. Instead, it helps to set the character's personality through a funny running gag where she explains how she ended up in that racket, and I have to admit I almost believed her first version during the opening credits, before the following scene reminded me that it was still a Billy Wilder comedy I was watching, and not every word was to be taken at face value.
"Irma la Douce" treatment of prostitution is still quite innocent for its time despite the many sexual innuendo that fill the screenplay written by Wilder and his all-time partner L.A.L Diamond. All the hookers, including Irma, are closer to Benny Hill's pin-ups than any hooker from the 70's ghettos. There is one decade between "Irma la Douce" and "Klute" or "Taxi Driver", but on the scale of cinematic evolution, it's an eternity. But the tone is perfect for the screwball comedy, adapted from a French musical based on the play from Alexandre Breffort. No room for cynicism when you have the so adorable face of Shirley Mac Laine, much more, with Jack Lemmon, her co-star in Wilder's previous success: "The Apartment". The 1960 Best Picture is still superior, but acting-wise and chemistry-wise, Lemmon and Mac Laine still got it in "Irma".
And besides the performances, which were delicious slices of Mac Laine's "innocent baby-faced girl-next-door" Lemmon's "clumsy-struggling-everyman" periods, what I loved the most about the film, was its remarkable recreation of the post-War postcard-like Paris, where prostitution is only part of that entertaining soul dedicated to tourists, tired workers and businessmen, the sleepless Paris and its 'petites femmes'. As depicted in a film, it's a whole holistic system ensuring a profit for everyone: the girls, their "macs" (the word "pimp" is never used), the customers, and even cops are taken care of. Everything works until, a disaster happens: a honest cop. This is officer Nestor Patou, Jack Lemmon as a newly promoted cop in Les Halles, noticing on his first day strange going-on between Rue Casanova and the namesake hotel.
He then questions Moustache, whose real name is Constacescu, Moustache was the former owner's name, but it was more convenient to grow one than buy a new sign (logical and priceless). And Jacobi delivers a magnificent performance as a man who seemed to have embraced any possible career in his lifetime: being between many others, a lawyer, a teacher, a businessman
but as he says "that's another story". Yet from these stories, he learned many lessons, making him the film's voice of reason. And before Patou calls his colleagues, Moustache warns him: "to be overly honest in a dishonest world is like plucking a chicken against the wind... you'll only wind up with a mouth full of feathers." Patou gets the whole chicken in his mouth.
Now, if there was one way to summarize the whole misadventures that drive the love story between Patou and Irma, I'd rather copy-paste that quote from the film, delivered when Patou was accused of killing his main rival, who was his girl's most valuable client, the British Lord X. Are you ready? Here it is: "You couldn't have killed Lord X because you were Lord X only you weren't Lord X, you were a mac. Only you weren't a mac, you worked in the market to pay for making love to your own girl from making the money to give to Lord X to give to Irma to give to you to pay for making love to your own girl, whom you could have made love to for free, except you were too tired from making the money to give to Lord X to give to Irma to give to you. That's the truth. If you tell that mishmash to a jury, you're a cinch to get 15 years."
That is the plot in a nutshell and I wonder how I could have followed every bit of this spaghetti of a plot, with the same enthusiastic mood. I guess this is a credit to the performances -Mac Laine got an Oscar nomination, but I could have figured one for Lemmon and Jacobi- and the fantastic Technicolor recreation of Paris. However, I must admit, not without guilt, that sometimes I watched my watch. 147 minutes is still too much demanding in terms of patience, much more for a comedy, and maybe the film could have cut a few bits: one scene is Les Halles' market was redundant and since the film didn't intend to be a musical, it could have done without the musical number, no matter how terrific Mac Laine's dancing was.
"Irma" had the wit, the zaz, but not that straightforwardness that made Wilder's previous works such unbeatable classics. But to call it "minor" would be unfair. Well, I felt the film dragged too long and at the end, I was eager to see 'the end' but that impatient feeling was rewarded by the ending. I must say I didn't see the last minute coming, and it reminded me that if there was a cinematic God for mind-blowing finales and great concluding lines, that man was Billy Wilder.
