THE APARTMENT (1960)

Neha says
If you appreciate Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire and Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air then Billy Wilder’s black and white 1960’s classic dramedy The Apartment will resonate with you. A breed of engaging entertainment that combines a character study with corporate satire, intelligently balancing honest wit, candor and emotion that has us rooting for their flawed but real heroes, sympathetic to how they try to balance humanity and ambition and invariably these movies make us question what’s really important in life. The Apartment even today is no less topical as it mocks the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” philosophy of cut throat corporate America. Pseudoisms of the industry are also given a send up: which floor you work on reflects your place in the tree of worldly evolution, where a cabin with a name on the door gives you pent house status and where extra marital affairs with Marilyn Monroe look a likes or office secretaries is part of the trade.

While our hero C. C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) doesn’t have a mission statement like Jerry Maguire or a 10,000 air miles collecting goal of Ryan Bingham, what he does have is ambition to climb up the corporate ladder. Here’s a guy who uses a tennis racket as a pasta strainer so he knows how to get his way around!!! Wilder gets an instant “thumbs up” for the way in which he sets up this satire and introduces us to character with a sharp and witty voice over and incisive images capturing Baxter’s insignificance in a crowded office setting. Baxter lends his apartment to senior colleagues for their extra marital trysts in the hope of a promotion in return. He is truly a spineless individual at first and Wilder along with long time collaborator, screenwriter IAL Diamond bleeds it for all the comedic value they can and to sublime effect. Particularly memorable is a scene where Baxter is frantically trying to schedule time and day slots for the use of his apartment. He does get that promotion with strings attached as his boss Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) is keen to use the apartment as well. Things get murky as Baxter ‘s crush on the no nonsense elevator girl Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) runs up against her long standing affair with his boss. Can his job be in greater jeopardy? What if Baxter was to come back home one night to find Fran lifeless in his bed? Fran’s suicide attempt among others is a poignant reflection of urban emptiness and in all of the cynicism that Wilder savages into, he is unswervingly sympathetic of some of the crazy, illogical decisions our hearts often make.

Like in the case of most of his films, Wilder pushes his actors to outdo themselves and casting Lemmon as an unlikely leading man after previously working with him on Some Like it Hot was a stroke of genius. Lemmon explores his comic potential hitting the right notes with both his manic exasperation and endearing compassion, giving us one his most noteworthy performances. In contrast MacLaine holds her own against eavyweights like Lemmon and MacMurray bringing a refreshing mix of confidence, charm and sass that even won her the Academy nomination for Best Actress. MacMurray as the selfish, manipulative Sheldrake encapsulates that blood boiling grey character requirement and in his sly and uncompromising portrayal he annoys, angers and disgusts with dart-like precision. Even the supporting turns from Ray Walston, Edie Adams and Jack Kruschen are worthy of a Billy Wilder movie.

MacClaine’s final words “Shut up and deal” still puts a smile on my face as I think of Wilder’s ability to make such an anti-romantic film so revealing, passionate and quite simply…romantic. Deservedly winning 5 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay, the film is a rare complete experience where every character stays true to the story and every dialogue, action or even prop feeds into the larger story with purpose but not force. For a film that’s got bite, heart, humor and soars with humanity I have to say it’s a new favorite and a superlative example of what the genre was and can be.

Ira says

If you’re a single guy who somehow gets taken for a ride more often than you like, this one’s for you. If you are one of those people who wants to be on the Big Boss’s good side, and out of the ‘goodness of your heart’ are happy do what you can for that raise, or promotion, watch your step, and if you’re the ‘buddy boy’ who doesn’t know better, who lives alone and becomes a sucker for it, you better sit up!

The one word I just can’t help thinking of when I think of BILLY WILDER’s The Apartment is ‘cute’. Not just ‘cute’ in the way that’s adorable, old fashioned and heart warming and because everyone involved really is too, Wilder is, Lemmon is, Maclaine is, the music is, the concept is, the language is, and the characters are (well, apart from the morally questionable albeit prototyped, one dimensional ‘cheaters’!). But also in part, in the dictionary sense (believe me, I was horrified when I discovered the actual OED definition is really far from the term of endearment we believe it to be; “cute: ugly but bearable”!), because while its certainly more than bearable, its not without its ugly (think cheating, adultery, Sheldrake’s character here, along with the other philanderers) and that’s the beauty with Wilder, satire is always beneath the humor, sentiment or buffoonery. If you haven’t seen any of WILDER’s prolific, diverse work, a Sunset Boulevard, or Some Like it Hot (another Jack Lemmon starrer and the film that brought Marilyn Monroe’s comic ability to the world’s notice!), you are seriously missing out, and if you haven’t seen this one, you’re missing out some more. A film that made the director one of only 5 people to win the Academy for producing, directing and writing, The Apartment is a must watch and one of the simplest, most well-told, sweet, funny, and sharp, boy-meets-girl love stories to come out of Hollywood in the 60’s and even today. I did something unusual this time before I started the film which was another cute revelation and very indicative of its time. I went to the main menu of my DVD and watched the theatrical trailer. As the strings of the opening-credit tunes well, a rich, articulate, typical TV-male-announcer-voice, introduces us to the film. I pictured a dark theatre, and rows of men and women, very much like the characters in the film, dressed in hats and suits listening with a tingle of anticipation as the voice, quite literally, sells us the film. “Wilder’s…sense of humor”, “ Jack’s versatility” (note, how he uses Jack, as if one of the biggest stars of the 1950’s and 60’s, Lemmon is really his pal, his own buddy boy), and “Maclaine’s warmth… that lights up the screen like Christmas tree”. Which, I have to say, even in Wilder’s moody, sharply contrasted, black and white landscape, it really does.

It’s a classic tale of urban love this one, as in, ‘romantic comedy, big city, ordinary folks wise’. Cheating bosses, helpless victims, (think telephone operators, secretaries, and elevator girls), the gullible, decent, dedicated employee who’s being exploited, and the sweet little heroine, victim of one of the boss’s escapades who needs some tender, loving care and some, quite literal life saving. It might sound a bit jaded to you now, but Wilder’s skill with storytelling and wonderful editing make it timeless. From the mid 1950’s onwards, humor became Wilder’s area, his strongest weapon, his greatest strength and in this one, his writing, characters and performances are the right blend of original, fresh, very funny, real and universal. For starters, you pretty much have your tone set when your story’s told through the voice of one of Hollywood’s greatest comic talents. Lemmon’s precise, earnest, energetic voiceover opens the film where matched by quick, effective shots of Manhattan, Consolidated Life’s office building, his office floor, the sameness and uniformity of being an employee in a firm of over thirty thousand, of being a regular citizen in a city of eight million. And C.C Baxter’s i.e. Lemmon’s characters existence as just an everyman, an ordinary guy, instantly tells you that this one is going to be touching and comical tale about a guy who deserves better.

But as that voiceover ends with a wide shot of him staying on late at the office, alone amidst a mass of empty rows, desks and chairs, the mood breaks and a hint of trouble rears its ‘ugly but bearable’ head. The guy doesn’t really want to work late, he can’t go home. He just has to kill time somewhere because he’s been letting out his Apartment to a foursome of varied, well-cast, senior employees i.e. ‘boss men’ from his corporation, for activities involving liquor, ladies and permitted licentiousness, (their being married men –wise). Wilder keeps his touch light, effortless, focused and swooped up in a cloud of plenty of humor even as his writing paints a picture that has strains of satire, loneliness, of absent companionship, of relationships and love, wronged, false and realistic, in its every scene. Its in the moments of quiet, or in the strings of the violin, in an image of Lemmon stranded on a cold Central Park bench, or of strangers alone on Christmas, that you feel that underlying sense of emptiness but there’s a laugh or a friend just around the corner and I loved how Wilder doesn’t let us ponder or dwell with the sad but lets us celebrate the company, the flurry, the activity of life and love in his story, with both bite and empathy.

Lemmon is superb; his characterization, his body language and his attention to detail; sniffing with a head cold, talking to himself or trilling with a new found spring in his step when he has a ‘girl’ in his house, as he cooks her spaghetti, he’s clumsy, lovable, naïve, warm, sincere to the point of being exasperating and always watch-able becoming the real hero of the story with a gentle, unassuming, affectionate confidence. No matter what the neighbors think, no matter how much you want to shake him for not being able to say no, and no matter how sorry you feel for him as he watches TV and eats his microwave/oven dinner alone in front of his TV set (loved the dig Wilder gives to the action genre and TV advertising here, as Lemmon flips through channels all he gets are Westerns, action films and violent slapstick comedy. And then, don’t miss the hilarious lob about cable TV and it’s endless ‘words from sponsors” and ‘words from ‘alternate sponsors’!), you root for him and you wish he just gets the girl! Lemmon is amongst those ‘Hollywood sweethearts’, a bit like Julia Roberts, actors who have unarguable appeal when they appear on screen. As is Ms Maclaine, only 26 years old, fresh faced and moony –eyed, nominated for her second Academy award for this one, she’s adorable and makes for the perfect foil to Sheldrake’s suave, slimy ways & Lemmon’s good-natured charm.

Wilder uses his first of very few close ups in the scene where the two first interact in a crowded elevator where there’s no room for starry-eyed ‘love at first sight moments’. They work together, he’s Baxter from the 19th floor and she’s Ms Kubelik from the elevator. There’s a comfort there and of course only a hint of romance as he shyly, straightforwardly admits to having read her insurance card and knowing details she lives with her sister, and had measles. And details give THE APARTMENT flavor, humanity and richness all around. I loved how the apartment becomes a character and scenes play out with a spontaneous energy within that space. I loved how the camera stays on Lemmon as he does his usual chores, his daily routines, the depth of field in the frames enhancing the sense of a lived in, real room, the lighting, and I loved how our hero makes it all his own.

Wilder’s plot moves swiftly, and wavers little from the central thread and while the leads are excellent, one of the most stand -out things for me is the fabulous supporting cast be it delightful neighbors, cranky landladies, cab drivers and perfect strangers in bars, they are all superb and add to that authentic Manhattan texture. I loved Mrs. Lieberman, the landlady, (got to be one of the most common middle aged Jewish characters names in the movies, yes?), I loved Doc and his wife Mildred, the Marylyn Monroe replica who gets the intonation and voice spot-on, Mr. Dobisch, Mr. Kirkeby, and the other two ‘bosses’, Ms Olsen the wronged, bitter secretary, and my favorite, Margie McDougall. A married, but temporarily ‘available’ woman whom Lemmon decides to hilariously waltz with in a drunken stupor at a bar, proceeding to take her back to his Apartment, (hell, everyone else uses it, so why shouldn’t he), only to find Mclaine passed out on his bed. With a game of GIN RUMMY that rounds up much of the film’s realistic, unsentimental culmination, with its well-etched characters, darker, satirical undertones, effective, simple storytelling and great cast, The Apartment is classic WILDER and a classic rom-com. As Baxter would say, it’s pretty much a must, movie-wise.