BILLY WILDER: Irma la Douce (1963)

“But that’s another story…”

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of sex work, pimps, misogyny, mistreatment, abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, murder, death.

Our final entry into the Billy Wilder series is, well, a real dud. Mostly because no one grabbed a hold of Billy and his new collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond to tell them this movie was overlong and telling far too much story. In fact, the first 2/3 of this movie drag on and on until the final 30 minutes, and all of a sudden it becomes one of the most bonkers, over-the-top farces in movie history. And none of it is particularly good. Still, Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon have so much chemistry that it's impossible not to be charmed by moments of this movie. It's just not nearly up to the standards Billy's set for himself as one of our greatest directors. Slip on your green stockings as we finish our Billy Wilder series with 1963’s Irma la Douce on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!

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Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive..

Excerpt taken from the film Irma la Douce is © 1963 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

Excerpt taken from "Rondeau from Suite de Symphonies," composed by Jean-Joseph Mouret and performed by the English Chamber Orchestra. Copyright SME (on behalf of SMCMG), Public Domain Compositions, and 4 Music Rights Societies.