Irma la Douce (French: [iʁ.ma la dus], "Irma the Sweet") is a 1963 American romantic comedy film directed by Billy Wilder from a screenplay he co-wrote with I. A. L. Diamond, based on the 1956 French stage musical of the same name by Marguerite Monnot and Alexandre Breffort. However, Wilder removed all the songs from the stage version; so while the film is based on a musical, it is not a musical. The film stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.
Contents
Plot
Nestor Patou, an honest policeman, has been transferred from the Bois de Boulogne to Les Halles, a more urban neighborhood in Paris. He finds a street full of prostitutes working at the Hotel Casanova and raids the place, arresting the prostitutes and catching his police department's chief at the same time (while not knowing him). The inspector fires Nestor, who is mistakenly framed for bribery and for insubordination.
Kicked off the force and humiliated, Nestor finds himself drawn to the very neighborhood that ended his career with the Paris police—returning to Chez Moustache, a popular tavern for prostitutes and pimps. Down on his luck, Nestor befriends Irma la Douce, a popular prostitute. He reluctantly accepts, as a confidant, the proprietor of Chez Moustache, a man known only as Moustache. In a running joke, Moustache tells of a storied prior life, claiming to have been, among other things, an attorney, a colonel in the Foreign Legion, and a doctor who worked with Albert Schweitzer in Africa, ending with the repeated line, "but that's another story". After saving Irma from her abusive pimp, Hippolyte, Nestor moves in with her and unwittingly becomes Irma's new pimp.
