Sweet irma

Sweet Irma (1963) is an American romantic comedy film directed by Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Winner of one of the two Oscars for which she was nominated, the film was based on a successful French musical released in 1956, with a book by Alexandre Breffort and music by Marguerite Monnot.

Plot

Sweet Irma tells the story of Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon), an innocent and idealistic Parisian gendarme transferred from the Bois de Boulogne to the Les Halles neighborhood. Next to the central market in Paris, Casanova street is full of prostitutes who work at the Hotel Casanova. In the middle of a raid, one of the arrested clients turns out to be Inspector Lefevre, Nestor's superior; both he and the rest of the gendarmes are aware of prostitution, but tolerate it in exchange for money. The inspector gets Néstor fired.

Expelled from the police force and humiliated, Néstor finds himself hanging around the same neighborhood where he ended his career as a gendarme; thus, he ends up in the tavern Chez Mustache , a resting place for prostitutes and their pimps. In the midst of a rough patch, Nestor befriends Sweet Irma (Shirley MacLaine), a popular prostitute, and the owner, a man known simply as Moustache (Lou Jacobi), who is apparently a simple waiter but who often tells stories about his life before the bar, in which he boasts of having been, among many other things, a professor of economics at the Sorbonne or an obstetrician in Equatorial Africa, always ending his narrative by saying "... but that's another history". After defending Irma in an altercation with her pimp Hippolyte, Nestor moves in with her and, swayed by her good heart, soon finds himself pimping Irma.

Jealous of Irma's relationship with other men, Nestor devises a plan to get Irma out of prostitution, but soon discovers that it won't be as easy as he thought. Thus, through a disguise he transforms into a character called Lord X, a British lord who ends up becoming Irma's exclusive client. Shortly this plan backfires on him as he has to work harder and harder as Nestor to pay off Irma as Lord X; Furthermore, Irma begins to suspect Néstor's behavior. When Irma decides to leave Paris and go with the false lord, Nestor ends the lie; Not realizing that he is being followed by Hippolyte, he throws his Lord X costume into the Seine but Hippolyte, who has not seen him change and only sees the clothes floating, deduces that Nestor has murdered the lord and denounces him. Before the impending arrest, Mustache advises him not to reveal Lord X's story, telling him: "The prisons are full of innocent people who told the truth", and Nestor admits to killing Lord X out of his love for Irma.

Locked up in prison, but with the love of Irma, Néstor is sentenced to 15 years of hard labor; through Mustache he finds out that Irma is pregnant, escapes with his help and takes refuge in Irma's apartment. When the police come looking for him, Néstor simply puts on his gendarme uniform again and blends in with the rest of the agents. Using Hippolyte, Mustache directs the search towards the Seine, from which he emerges disguised as Lord X, thus dismissing the murder charge, since the dead man is alive. He immediately runs to the church to marry Irma. During the ceremony the pre-delivery contractions begin, and the baby is born just after the wedding. While Néstor and the rest of the guests attend to Irma, Mustache notices a guest who remains alone in the first pews of the church. As he gets up and walks past Mustache, he is shocked to see that it is Lord X himself. Mustache looks into the camera and says, "...but that's another story."

Awards

Oscars

Golden Globe Awards

Others