- Irma la Douce
7/26/24 (Fri)
Billy Wilder’s film of the long-running French musical, stripped of its music, about a happy hooker and a clumsy admirer who wants to keep her to himself. It reunites Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine from The Apartment (after Marilyn Monroe, the original choice and Lemmon’s Some Like It Hot collaborator, passed away). The stage musical, which also had a healthy run on Broadway, was scored by one of Edith Piaf’s collaborators and has some great tunes, but Wilder kept them only as underscoring other than a brief snatch of “Dis-Donc”. The film had some impressive musical talent, including MacLaine and Bruce Yarnell (a terrific foil for Ethel Merman in the subsequent revival of Annie Get Your Gun), and some musical numbers were supposedly filmed. But Wilder evidently felt the songs slowed down the action and canned all the footage. Still, André Previn did a more-than-capable job of offsetting this. Wilder should have cut some of the protracted would-be comedy instead, especially involving the faux British guy. The film could easily lose half an hour from its 140-minute running time.
sekenbanashi 