The Apartment (1960) dir. Billy Wilder
“Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were.”
You will never have an experience like watching Billy Wilder’s 1960 masterpiece The Apartment for the first time. The closest you could get to that particular high is the second time you watch it, then the third. Once you’ve had your first hit of this film you’ll scarcely make it a year without an itch arising somewhere deep in your soul compelling you to watch it again. It’s a wonderful work of art, a romantic comedy that rides the line with drama better than it has any right to. A tight script, a beautiful score, and charming leads, The Apartment is a classic for the ages and criminally underseen by the average person today.
The premise for the film, as with many of Billy Wilder’s other works, is simple yet unique; a mild-mannered insurance clerk desperate to climb the ranks of the corporate ladder lends his apartment to company executives who use it as a place to entertain their mistresses. That clerk, C.C. Baxter, played by the ever-exceptional Jack Lemmon is strung along by his bosses with hints and suggestions of promotion, forcing him to remain late at work to have a warm place in the evening or developing reputation among the neighbours and landlady as a serial womaniser. Baxter, however, is willing to take some hits in his personal life if it means jumping the line for a promotion. It’s a fine arrangement, until he wants to use the apartment himself.
Enter Shirley Maclean as Fran Kubelik, who operates one of the elevators in the building where Baxter works. She is the heart of the film (perhaps along with Dr. and Mrs. Dreyfuss) who pulls Baxtor from his world of apathy as he attempts to woo her. In a devastating twist of irony, Miss Kubelik ends up in Baxter’s apartment where the depth this movie is willing to push its characters is revealed. Miss Kubelik has some of the most intense internal and external conflicts of the film, she pushes Baxter into his most significant moment of growth and delivers one of the greatest final lines in the history of cinema.
Now, you may fall into the trap of thinking this movie is predictable, boring, or “not really my thing” I assure you, you are mistaken. Those 125 minutes of pure bliss The Apartment provides is nothing short of miraculous. If you know anything about Wilder, you should know his plotting is immaculate, the story knows its rhythm from the word “go” and knows how to mix it up when the moment requires. Each twist in the plot, each yank in another direction is endlessly compelling. It’s a movie longing to be watched in a packed cinema, with the lights turned low and the crowd silent until Wilder demands their laughter or gasps.
The Apartment is a movie which pulls no punches. The executives are slimy and just as power-hungry as Baxter was heading. Truly good and kind people like Dr. Dreyfuss are rare. In a matter of minutes a character can be straining spaghetti with a tennis racquet and then be telling the gut-wrenching story of an attempted suicide. Nothing I say can summarise The Apartment better than its tagline “Movie-wise, there has never been anything like “THE APARTMENT” love-wise, laugh-wise or otherwise-wise!”
It’s a great time and you will undoubtedly leave it with a smile on your face and a spark in your soul that will rear its head before the year is through.