This time around, Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine don't quite achieve the sure-thing pairing that graced the superlative The Apartment several seasons before, and it's the fault of their characters, not their own. The script makes the pair a comedy duo swapping dirty double entendres about sex, and we never warm up to them. Both characters are required to play different types of dumb to make the jokes work. Irma, being arrested for soliciting, doesn't realize Nestor is referring to her dog, and not her: "There are rules you know! You need to put it on a leash!"

Wilder is obviously taken with his notion of a corrupt Red Light district that operates like a candy store for carnal sin - the outrageous girls have names like Amazon Annie and Suzette Wong , but are perfectly happy in their work, standing along the crooked rue hawking their wares. Their mecs are organized in a slyly-named association that boils down to the acronym M.P.A.A. (!), and the whole shebang looks like a color cartoon ripped from the pages of Playboy.

Irma La Douce had recently been a successful Broadway musical, but Wilder went back to the original play and played it straight. The rather depressing fall from grace of Nestor, originally a hero Parisian cop for rescuing a kid in a playground, is explained with a flippant 'way of all flesh' attitude. His suffering really isn't that enjoyable, and the attractive French fantasy world he and Irma live in isn't all that pleasant, even with slapstick gags and funny fights breaking out nightly in Moustache's cafe. The fun-killer is Nestor's 'Lord X' persona, who may be from the original play but is a terribly dumb idea. He's not funny, even if Wilder tries to make him a composite of every English movie cliché going. Lemmon's fake teeth and eyepatch are terminally unfunny, with the result that the picture is his first comedy failure.

What doesn't work is Wilder's basic setup: Nestor love a prostitute willing to sleep with other men in order to stay with him. He can't stand this, so goes in disguise and pays her big sums not to sleep with anyone else. But he has to secretly work so hard, she decides he's cheating on her and stops loving him. The only lesson from this is a smarmy, 'ya just can't win with females', which isn't enough. Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid is far sleazier than this show, but its farcical framework of mistaken identity and deception is an interesting examination of the convention of marriage. The pretzel-plot of Irma La Douce is just a hook to hang a story on. It's not enough - although the story lumbers on for two hours and 23 minutes, it's really over when Nestor defeats Irma's pimp and takes her for his own.

The most bizarre thing about Irma La Douce is that the real M.P.A.A. didn't pounce on it like a sardine at a cat show. Besides breaking most of the rules, the movie flaunts its dirty jokes without a shred of enlightenment. One would have to think the grand cathedral wedding, with the bride lurching about from labor pains, would have dropped a flag with the Catholic Legion of Decency as well. Maybe they were all too flattered by the same year's The Cardinal, and Wilder's film slipped by.

The more serious critics called Wilder's sex romp a stinker, but it became his biggest moneymaker of the sixties. I remember reading a review that slammed the film by dwelling on the scene where the bored-looking Irma showed off her new green underwear for Nestor. It wasn't that bad, and 1963 audiences probably thought the whole immature film was the height of sophistication - Irma La Douce became his biggest moneymaker of the 60s.

It's said that Liz Taylor was meant to be the original Irma, and it would have been something to see her figure in the racy green underwear, if Wilder could have pulled it off. A more established fact is that Charles Laughton was originally set as the loquatious bartender Moustache, until sickness forced him to bow out - most Wilder bios have the director visiting the actor to read the script and laugh, when both parties knew Laughton was sinking fast.

The supporting cast provides some dividend pleasures. Joan Shawlee and the hilarious Hope Holiday return from The Apartment to play exaggerated hookers, along with notable fleshpots Grace Lee Whitney of TV's Star Trek and Tura Satana, cult vixen of Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! Very visible as customers on the Rue Casanova are TV star Bill Bixby, and a very young James Caan. Cliff Osmond and Howard McNear, both of Kiss, Me Stupid, are here as well.

MGM's DVD of Irma La Douce is 16:9 enhanced, but it was an earlier release (April 2, 2002) and, like The Apartment, didn't receive the optimum transfer that did some of its boxmates in last month's Wilder collection. The difference can only be seen on a large monitor, where the difference in definition and apparent line structure becomes visible. Perhaps its just the improvement in transfer technology?

Andre Previn's fine score won the film's only Oscar, and it sounds great here. There are also French and Spanish dub tracks, and a clever original trailer.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Irma La Douce rates:
Movie: Good -
Video: Good
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Trailer
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: August 17, 2003