I recently received the Billy Wilder DVD collection as a birthday gift. I’d seen several Billy Wilder films, including “The Apartment” and “Some Like it Hot” at the Stanford Theatre, and am excited about seeing more of his films. I just watched Irma la Douce and it was quite enjoyable. One could pick some plot holes in it, but that’s true of all the screwball comedies, and this one has less glaring weaknesses than most. Jack Lemmon is, as usual, quite expressive. And Shirley MacLaine is easy on the eyes, to put it mildly.
The character Moustache (Lou Jacobi) had a great line:
Shows you the kind of world we live in. Love is illegal – but not hate. That you can do anywhere, anytime, to anybody. But if you want a little warmth, a little tenderness, a shoulder to cry on, a smile to cuddle up with, you have to hide in dark corners, like a criminal. Pfui.
A little dated now, I suppose, since in recent years we’ve put a lot of hate crime laws on the books, which I think is a bad idea. If Joe is convicted of assaulting Fred, I think Joe should get the same punishment regardless of whether he hated some category Fred happened to belong to.
I also recently watched the comedy How To Get Ahead in Advertising. Borders on horror (lightly). Rather amusing, though the commentary on the advertising industry is too true to be as funny as they tried to make it.