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Irma La Douce Photos

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Movie Info

This entertaining comedy finds disgraced former police officer Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon) falling for beautiful Parisian prostitute Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine). Though Nestor becomes Irma's pimp, he can't stand the idea of her being with clients, so he devises a way to keep her all to himself. This scheme leads to plenty of trouble, however, and soon Nestor is forced to avoid his old law-enforcement peers in an attempt to stay with Irma and out of jail.

Genre:

comedy
Original Language:

English
Director:

Billy Wilder
Release Date (Theaters):

Jun 5, 1963 wide
Release Date (Streaming):

Dec 26, 2016
Runtime:

2h 27m
Production Co:

Phalanx Productions, Mirisch Corporation

Cast & Crew

Shirley MacLaine
Irma La Douce

Jack Lemmon
Nestor Patou, Lord X

Lou Jacobi
Moustache

Herschel Bernardi
Insp. Lefevre

Joan Shawlee
Amazon Annie

Hope Holiday
Lolita

Show all Cast & Crew

Critic Reviews for Irma La Douce

All Critics (21) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (5)

Set mainly in a bawdy-house that is never in the least bawdy, Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce is the kind of fantasy much favoured by Hollywood -- a sex comedy from which sex has been carefully eradicated.

March 11, 2020 | Full Review…

Elizabeth Sussex
Sight and Sound
Though Irma's 143-minute length is more than a little too much of a very good thing, it's hard to dislike a movie that keeps giving you more good stuff.

January 26, 2019 | Full Review…

Sam Adams
Philadelphia City Paper
Lemmon and Maclaine fail to reproduce the chemistry from The Apartment but this slight film is not as ignorable as reputation suggests.

January 25, 2019 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…

David Parkinson
Empire Magazine
Irma also misses on several important counts, and the fact that it does illustrates the sizable problems inherent in an attempt to convert a legit musical into a tuneless motion picture farce.

March 26, 2009 | Full Review…

Variety Staff
Variety
A good example of how a movie can be utterly characteristic of its maker and still fall with a resounding thud...

August 15, 2007 | Full Review…

Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader
Wilder's soft-centred cynicism provides frequent enough laughs without too many longueurs.

June 24, 2006 | Full Review…

Geoff Andrew
Time Out
Billy Wilder is a great director and you can't find too many actress es better than Shirley MacLaine, so when Jack Lemmon appears on the screen, the triple-treat is complete.

January 13, 2021 | Full Review…

Marlene Matouk
Tampa Bay Times
The latest Wilder-Diamond-J.L. gagorama has everything: lovely color shots of Paris, lots of laughs, tears, action, and two of our best film actors, Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Everything but charm and style, the essentials for its genre

August 12, 2019 | Full Review…

Dwight MacDonald
Esquire Magazine
A magical and beguiling tale of love of the mean streets of Paris.

March 16, 2019 | Full Review…

Rob Aldam
Backseat Mafia
One of Billy Wilder's lesser films, Irma La Douce relies entirely on its two stars, Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, neither of whom is particularly good or funny, despite the masks and the accents.

February 17, 2011 | Rating: C+ | Full Review…

Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com
Wilder somehow sustains the lively pace and humor for the two-and-a-half hour color comedy.

October 18, 2008 | Full Review…

Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid
Just great fun.

February 21, 2008 | Rating: 5/5

Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com

View All Critic Reviews (21)

Audience Reviews for Irma La Douce

Aug 20, 2018

Wilder, Lemmon and MacLaine team up again after their collaboration in The Apartment to offer us a funny and audacious farce that works well enough despite being a bit overlong and clumsy in parts, especially as it becomes more and more contrived towards the end.

Carlos M Super Reviewer
Feb 24, 2018

"the apartment" with a bigger budget and less of a point, Wilder reteams lemmon and Maclaine in essentially the same roles, under different, lighter circumstances and a Parisian locale. it's not bad, per se, only light entertainment. Network television used to run the film every year.

Kevin M. W Super Reviewer
Nov 04, 2013

Thanks to Lemmon and MacLaine, we get some some great laughs about a man in love with a prostitute and the extreme lengths he takes to keeping her away from other men. Great goofiness as only Lemmon can pull off.

John B Super Reviewer
Apr 05, 2012

This is a fun film, but it doesn't near comparison to wilder's work with the two stars in 'the apartment." ...but no one said that it should.

Stefanie C Super Reviewer