BEFORE: I was going to go straight on to "The Prisoner of 2nd Ave.", but since "The Great Race" ended in Paris, it makes more sense to follow up with this other Jack Lemmon film, also set in Paris.
I forgot to mention the other day how I spent some free time in Manhattan - on Tuesday I had a doctor's appointment in the late morning, and a dinner going on at 6:30, with not much to do in between, except for buying some new pants at the Big & Tall store. There was no way that I could spend 5 hours buying pants, so after a few other errands, I spent a few hours in Bryant Park, just reading half of a Star Wars novel. This is something I do so rarely that it almost felt like I was doing something wrong - but all things considered, it's not really a bad use of time, it's something I can only do when I have free time, which usually is not often at all. But since I'm still only working part time, perhaps I should do this more often, because it seems more productive than just spending time at home, taping and watching old movies, and re-arranging my watchlist schedule.
THE PLOT: In Paris, an ex-cop falls in love with a prostitute, and tries to get her out of that life by paying for all of her time. Not so easy...
AFTER: My instincts to switch films were solid - besides the Paris setting, this film shares something else with "The Great Race", and that's the fact that Jack Lemmon has a double role. Sort of - in "The Great Race", he played two different characters, one of whom was a European prince. In tonight's film, Lemmon's character disguises himself as a British Lord, but it's merely a costume to fool his girlfriend. He sports an eyepatch, a fake moustache, and adopts a high British accent in order to become one of his girlfriend's clients.
Also, the sexual politics that were touched on in "The Great Race" get a further exploration here - after women's suffrage was such a hot-button item in the 1910's, the emancipation of women didn't really change all that much, if they're still working as hookers in the 1960's. (I assume the film is set the year it was released, but I admit that the year the story takes place is left open to interpretation.) Lemmon plays Nestor Patou, an honest cop who falls for an attractive hooker, after raiding the hotel where she works. However, a number of notable Frenchmen were in the hotel at the time, including his superior officer, and no one clued in poor Nestor on how he was supposed to look the other way, so before long he's out of a job. The good news is, this clears him to have a relationship with the hooker.
Unfortunately, this is much more complicated than it needs to be - see if you can follow the logic. His girlfriend is a prostitute, let's be clear about that. And a prostitute needs a pimp, (or in this film's language, a "mec") so he sort of follows into the boyfriend/pimp role. That itself calls into question the sexual politics that the film puts forward - if she's a liberated woman, why does she need a pimp? Why not be her own pimp, go into business for herself? And if she's so independent, why does she need to cry to get things to be the way she wants? I guess even in liberated France, it's two steps forward, and one step back.
But because he doesn't want to share her with other men, and he can't get her to stop working at her job, he creates this British Lord character to pay her so well that she doesn't need to take on other clients. Problem solved - except in order to raise money to pay her well, he has to borrow it -
then he pays her, she brings the money back to him, and he has to repay the man he borrowed it from, so he's getting nowhere fast.
He then decides to work all night at the local market, which gets him the money he needs to pay her, but leaves him too tired to take advantage of all the free time she now has, so there's a strain on their relationship, and this solution isn't really viable as such either. Then things get even MORE complicated, but I digress.
But also like "The Great Race", this film is much too long, clocking in at 2 hours and 24 minutes. There simply must have been a way to trim this down - maybe one less interaction with Lord X or a couple fewer turn-arounds. I'm not quite sure I can condone taking a stage musical, removing all of the songs, and still (presumably) maintaining the length of the story. It's just that usually when you cut things from a production, you end up making it shorter, that's all.
I always thought this name was pronounced "ERR-mah", but everyone in this film said it like it was "EER-mah" - maybe that was a French thing? Only except for that, no one in the film spoke much French, or even had a hint of a French accent, which seems like a strange choice.
Also starring Shirley MacLaine (last seen in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"), Lou Jacobi (last seen in "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)"), Bruce Yarnell, Herschel Bernardi (last seen in "The Front"), Hope Holiday, Grace Lee Whitney, Howard McNear, with cameos from Louis Jourdan (last seen in "Love in the Afternoon"), Bill Bixby, James Caan.
RATING: 4 out of 10 hands of "double solitaire"
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