Although many rom-coms have used the broad structure of “The Apartment” (1960’s Best Picture winner), few have matched its genuineness. At the broadest glance, C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a company-climber at his insurance agency, and Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) is looking for financial security via marriage.
But director Billy Wilder (co-writing with regular collaborator I.A.L. Diamond) lets us get to know and like the pair. Their flaws are not unappealing, but more like mental blockages due to societal expectation, and it’s amusing to learn the method by which Baxter makes extra cash to pay for his NYC apartment and earn favor with middle management.
He sublets his cozy (but nice for the big city) bachelor pad on an hourly basis for trysts for the married men in his office with their girlfriends. I don’t know if this was ever a real thing, but if people can save a few bucks compared to a hotel room, it makes logical sense.
“The Apartment” (1960)
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
Stars: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray
It’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Lemmon in the role as a nice guy who doesn’t exactly finish last, but certainly not first. Long before his Gil Gunderson-style days, he takes Baxter’s setbacks in stride. Another smile-worthy running gag is that Baxter’s neighbor, Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen), assumes from the noise in the apartment that Baxter is a tireless lovemaking machine, so much so that he asks him to consider donating his body to science.
Fran, the elevator operator at the agency, could be played by any cute, flighty actress and “The Apartment” could get by, but MacLaine provides depth behind her eyes. While I never felt the chemistry between MacLaine and Fred MacMurray (as Sheldrake, who also happens to be Baxter’s boss), it rings true that she has convinced herself she’s in love – only outsiders can see that she’s stuck on one mental track.
Trial run at domesticity
When circumstances make it so Baxter has to nurse the suicidal Fran back to health at his apartment, they inadvertently test their domestic compatibility, something that people rarely get to test prior to officially being a couple. Unlike in most rom-coms, there’s actually little sexual tension in these scenes due to Baxter’s Nice Guy nature, but that makes it all the more satisfying to anticipate Fran’s mental fog lifting.
“The Apartment” is a dramedy, but most dramedies are consistently humorous as they advance serious plots (for example, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s midcentury-influenced shows like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”). Wilder’s film is different: It’s quick-hitting and rhythmic in its light-touch humor in the first hour, but in the last hour the drama takes over, the shift coming with Fran’s health scare.
The tonal change is noticeable but not jarring, thanks to Lemmon. Baxter has funny bachelor traits, like using a tennis racket as a pasta strainer, but he’s not a joke. He’s a Nice Guy we can admire, rather than feeling ashamed for. Yes, the film hits on the adage that if you’re patient, you’ll find true love, but that Pollyanna attitude is OK – maybe even welcome — for a movie set around Christmas.
One oddity jumps out at me: Why did Wilder choose to shoot this relatively upbeat movie in black and white? Wouldn’t greens and reds and maybe some costume-drama zest at the office party have enhanced the mood?
Moving up the corporate ladder, but away from his humanity
On the other hand, it makes sense that the rows upon rows of desks at the agency fading to a horizon point would be gray. I like how this portrayal of how to move up in a company is honest rather than satirical.
Working hard (he stays late without overtime pay) doesn’t necessarily hurt Baxter. But in order to get those promotions, he does need to go extra-curricular with his apartment-rental scheme. At the same time, if advancement can be done so easily, he’d also have to accept being a robot responding to whims of bosses, rather than a thinking, feeling human being with elite skills.
In that way, Baxter and Fran – seeming to come at each other from different directions – begin to move in parallel. They had been thinking so hard about how to move up in the world that they’ve forgotten it’s OK to make some decisions based on emotions.
When it finally hits them, we get a series of scenes that boost Wilder’s reputation as one of the best directors at sticking landings. I especially like Baxter’s delicious hand-off of “the key” to Sheldrake. Then Wilder masterfully calls back to Baxter’s attempted-suicide story for a bang of a finale in the titular location.
An excellent off-the-beaten-path Christmas and New Year’s movie, “The Apartment” will have you smiling as the calendar turns.
IMDb Top 250 trivia
- “The Apartment” ranks No. 100 on the IMDb list with an 8.3 rating.
- It’s merely the third-highest rated film from Wilder, surpassed by “Sunset Boulevard” (No. 62, 8.4) and “Witness for the Prosecution” (No. 66, 8.4).
- 1960 (well into the color era) was a strong year for films incongruously shot in black and white. “Psycho” ranks at No. 34 with an 8.5 rating.
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