Irma La Douce Details

Billy Wilder took a hit Broadway musical, cut out all the songs and still came up trumps with this near-classic comedy. Jack Lemmon plays a priggish gendarme who dons a variety of improbable but hilarious disguises to save the soul (if not the virtue) of Shirley MacLaine's Parisian hooker. Set in and around the Les Halles food market, brilliantly re-created on a Hollywood sound stage by art director Alexander Trauner, it's a puzzle of a picture about morality and redemption, energetically performed by its two leads. The film was originally to have starred Elizabeth Taylor, but Wilder chose to reunite the stars of his 1960 Oscar-winner, The Apartment; Charles Laughton was also signed to play the café owner, but he died just as shooting started. Blink and you'll miss James Caan making his screen debut as one of MacLaine's clients.

A saucy yarn originally presented inventively as a small-scale stage musical becomes a tasteless yawn on the big screen, especially when presented at such length and without the songs. Minor compensations abound but are insufficient.