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A glossy, off-kilter Billy Wilder farce with terrific chemistry between Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, but it’s also overlong, tonally erratic, and built on a premise that can feel ethically messy even by old-Hollywood-comedy standards. The pleasures are real: polished direction, Parisian spectacle, and a few… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 2h 27m
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Shirley MacLaine, Jack Lemmon, Lou Jacobi
When a recently fired policeman falls in love with a French prostitute, he doesn't want her to be with other men, so he creates an alter-ego in order to become her only customer.
Billy Wilder
Shirley MacLaine, Jack Lemmon, Lou Jacobi
A glossy, off-kilter Billy Wilder farce with terrific chemistry between Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, but it’s also overlong, tonally erratic, and built on a premise that can feel ethically messy even by old-Hollywood-comedy standards. The pleasures are real: polished direction, Parisian spectacle, and a few very funny stretches. But it’s not as sharp or airtight as Wilder’s best work.
Billy Wilder turns a risqué French boulevard premise into a lavish studio farce, and the result is as polished as it is unruly. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine are the main attraction: both are funny, warm, and easy to watch even when the plot starts wobbling under its own disguises and complications.
What makes the film interesting is also what makes it messy. It wants to be a romance, a sex comedy, and a social satire at once, and those gears don’t always mesh. Wilder’s eye for production design and comic timing keeps it moving, but the movie can feel overextended, with jokes and detours that land unevenly.
Still, there’s a strong appeal in its mixture of glamour and sleaze, tenderness and absurdity. It’s not one of Wilder’s essential masterpieces, but it is a distinctive one: a big, strange, old-school comedy that’s often more memorable for its mood and performances than for its plot mechanics.
ReCreation (3.5★) · 1324 likes
Easily the second best movie about Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine sharing an apartment.
russman (3.5★) · 888 likes
Didn't realize you needed so many degrees to be a bartender
Sara Clements (3.5★) · 541 likes
I don’t know what Billy Wilder was on when he wrote this screenplay, but I want it.
Raul Marques (4★) · 373 likes
For about an hour or so, I was almost convinced to be watching an undertalked masterpiece that got obfuscated by Wilder's impressive repertoire. The heightened art direction, from the elaborated Paris' streets set, to the eye-popping Technicolor cinematography, to the distinctive costumes, were all a perfect fit for a script that immaculately tied the bittersweet romance of 'The Apartment' with the silly sex-comedy antics of 'The Seven Year Itch'. Even the themes seemed magnificently progressive for its time period, with
Sydney🚀 (3.5★) · 227 likes
An absolutely insane movie about a man who crashes out because he can’t handle his girlfriend being a sex worker, that was clearly trying to lean into the love for The Apartment and Some Like It Hot and the result is a tonally and ethically erratic sound stage bonanza, complete with an alcoholic dog and war stories and disguises and pimps and romance and prison escapes. I’m not sure if the stage production was widely acclaimed but it didn’t have Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine and this is indeed further proof that they are one of the greatest onscreen pairings of all time.
The closest match in tone and emotional texture: Wilder’s blend of romance, loneliness, and workplace comedy with a sharper, cleaner script.
For Wilder’s most exuberant disguise comedy, with rapid-fire farce, gender play, and star chemistry that never sags.
A breezier sex-comedy cousin with similar themes of desire, temptation, and comic male self-delusion.
Another polished Wilder romance that balances glamour, class tension, and a lightly cynical view of love.
If the appeal is Lemmon’s comic timing and Wilder’s dry cynicism, this is a strong follow-up with a sharper edge.
Not a tonal match, but a playful Parisian title for viewers drawn to performance, identity, and cinematic artifice.
For a similarly offbeat romantic-comic sensibility, with social awkwardness and a darkly funny view of courtship.
A great showcase for Lemmon’s exasperated comic persona, with precise timing and a strong sense of character friction.
A stylish, light-on-its-feet caper romance with old-school charm and polished studio elegance.
For viewers who like glossy 1960s style, romantic banter, and a playful sense of deception.
Another elegant, slightly absurd European-set comedy that leans on style, performance, and farcical momentum.
A domestic comedy built around star chemistry and escalating absurdity, with a similar era-specific sheen.
romantic farce, sex work, jealousy, disguise and deception, urban nightlife, bittersweet comedy, class and respectability, studio-era glamour
romantic comedy, farce, 1960s cinema, Paris setting, sex comedy, Technicolor, studio-era, bittersweet, screwball-adjacent