Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1963

The Contenders:

Patricia Neal: Hud (winner)
Shirley MacLaine: Irma la Douce
Natalie Wood: Love with a Proper Stranger
Leslie Caron: the L-Shaped Room
Rachel Roberts: This Sporting Life

Wilder a Little Wilder

Film: Irma la Douce
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

I like the work of Billy Wilder. There may well have been more competent or capable directors within specific genres, but there has never been a more versatile director. Wilder apparently could do and did do just about everything. Irma la Douce is the tenth of Wilder’s directorial efforts I’ve seen. I can’t honestly say that I’ve disliked any of his work. Irma la Douce doesn’t rise to the level of Wilder’s best work, but considering Wilder’s best work, that’s hardly a knock on this film.

Irma la Douce is a romantic comedy, but much like Wilder’s The Apartment, it’s a romantic comedy with a good bit of darkness to it. After all, it is the story of a prostitute and her pimp. Irma la Douce (Shirley MacLaine) is a streetwalker in a Paris neighborhood where it seems that every woman is a hooker and every man has a woman working for him. Irma is the most successful of these women, which is good because her “manager” Hippolyte (Bruce Yarnell) is a thug. Enter Officer Nester Patou (Jack Lemmon).