by Allan Fish
(USA 1960 125m) DVD1/2
Living like Robinson Crusoe
p Billy Wilder d Billy Wilder w Billy Wilder, I.A.L.Diamond ph Joseph La Shelle ed Daniel Mandell m Adolph Deutsch art Alexandre Trauner
Jack Lemmon (C.C. (Calvin Clifford) Baxter), Shirley MacLaine (Fran Kubelik), Fred MacMurray (Jeff D.Sheldrake), Edie Adams (Miss Olsen), Jack Kruschen (Dr Dreyfuss), Ray Walston (Dobisch), Joan Shawlee (Sylvia), David Lewis (Kirkeby), Hope Holiday (Margie MacDougall), Johnny Seven (Karl Matuschka),
In 2000, just a year before his death, Jack Lemmon was interviewed by Mark Cousins for the BBC’s Scene by Scene series and during their discussion about The Apartment Cousins made an interesting point. He asked Lemmon whether, in his opinion, he thought it was possible that if C.C.Baxter (the hero from Billy Wilder’s classic) had not found happiness with Fran Kubelik, and if things hadn’t gone too well for him, he might have turned into Shelley Levene, the bag of nerves, ageing real estate salesman from Glengarry Glen Ross, who tries to cheat his way to success to pay for his daughter’s operation. Lemmon thought about it and responded that it was perfectly possible. However, for all its cynicism, The Apartment ends on a high on New Year’s Eve so, for the sake of auld lang syne, let’s look on the bright side.
Our hero C.C.Baxter (“buddy boy” to his colleagues) works on the 19th floor of the Consolidated Life Insurance building in New York, but dreams of being an executive, so he loans out his apartment to executives for their extra-marital activities in return for them putting in a good word for him with personnel manager Jeff Sheldrake (a homage to the studio executive in Sunset Boulevard?). However, Sheldrake has plans of his own.
The Apartment is a romantic comedy of its time, but it’s also a wickedly accurate satire of office life. The premise for the film derived from the scene in Brief Encounter where Trevor Howard takes Celia Johnson to a friend’s apartment to make love, then gets interrupted, but it’s also a homage to several earlier films, with references to Wilder’s own The Lost Weekend as well as an office with endless rows of desks that owes much to King Vidor’s The Crowd. The difference here is that Baxter realises he’s one in the throng and wants out. As he tells Fran at one point “you know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked among eight million people. Then one day I saw a footprint in the sand and there you were. It’s a wonderful thing, dinner for two.” His doctor neighbour may ask him to behave more like a mensch (a human being), but he already knows he’s losing his soul. When he realises that Sheldrake is having a fling with the very same girl he longs for, he sees the irony, but slowly begins to regain his humanity.
Essentially the film’s premise could have fallen in on itself were it not for the excellence of the script and the performances. Lemmon was always at his best as the panicky American bachelor and Baxter is probably his signature role. Just check out his timing; whether ringing around his executive clients to switch nights so he can go to bed with his cold, straining spaghetti with a tennis racket, frantically trying to get himself out of numerous tight corners and especially clumsily trying to be cool around Fran, hardly able to contain his excitement that the love of his life is in his apartment, even his bed, whatever the circumstances. It’s a masterful performance. MacMurray again proves just what a great heel he can be, as well as showing the same superb delivery he showed in Wilder’s earlier Double Indemnity. Yet though both of them are brilliant and there are some fine performances from Jack Kruschen and Edie Adams in support, in many ways one best recalls MacLaine as the ultimate damaged goods heroine, who admits to having three lovers while holding up four fingers and bemoans “when you’re in love with a married man you shouldn’t wear mascara.” The sick irony, if you excuse the pun, is that she lost the Oscar to Elizabeth Taylor for Butterfield 8 in a sympathy vote because Taylor herself had almost been on her death bed with pneumonia. The cynical film which ended with MacLaine saying “shut up and deal!” had dealt her a rough hand indeed.
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I love this film, because the light comedic elements perfectly balance the sharp social commentary Wilder is making. It is still relevant today; the cultural milieu of the workplace has changed very little in the past 40 years, when you get down to it.
Thanks very much jeopardygirl, I must say I quite agree that little has changed in that sense, and that Wilder performs a marvelous balancing act with the comedy and social commentary. And what performances here!
Allan,
You have hit all the important points on this wonderful film, which along with “Some Like it Hot” and “Double Indemnity” are my personal favorite Wilder’s. The script is one of the best ever written, sharp, poignant and true.
Having worked in an office environment my whole “career” this film is also a wonderful time capsule on how things were and are now.
First – the office where the so-called “clerks” work. Large space with row after row of plain dull gray desk, mostly male staff, except for, typist and secretaries, and so production like (much like Vidor’s “The Crowd”) compared to today where office employees are in “cubes”, their own space similar, to the TV show “The Office.”
Second – the office party. Yes, years ago there were “wild” parties like that in offices of major companies. Drinking, dancing making out in the open, not today (at least not in the open). Human Resources would not allow it, too much liability, sexual harassment, political correctness, etc.
Lemmon was at his peak, a brilliant performance for which he should have won an Oscar. While Jack Kruschen was excellent, MacMurray should have received the supporting actor nomination. No one plays a heel as well as Freddie. Of course, the Oscars are generally not a reliable source of what were the great films or performances of the year. As you mention, Taylor winning over MacLaine’s performance, is a sad reminder. Another great review.
This is one of Wilder’s very best films — maybe even his best, because despite its cool satire, it’s arguably the most human (and humanist) film from a director who was often much more bitter and distant from his characters. I love how simultaneously sad and funny it is, and not just in the sense that it alternates comedic and dramatic scenes. Often, the very same moment will be both sad and funny, as is the case for most of the scenes involving Baxter letting out his apartment to his bosses. These scenes are hilarious, but at the same time Baxter’s miserable and kind of pathetic. The more one thinks about it, the more the laughs choke in one’s throat.
Shirley’s adorable, isn’t she?
As for the Cousins interview, what a depressing thought. I’ll avoid it – I prefer the film’s wryly happy ending. By the way, has anyone read Cousins’ film history, The Story of Film? It’s a great example of why not to judge a book by its cover. The text is actually quite excellent, straying far afield (it introduced me to many films I was either vaguely or completely unfamiliar with) while hewing closely enough to the great narrative of cinema. Yet the cover features cartoony lettering and a massive picture of Capt. Jack Sparrow dwarfing Buster Keaton. I almost didn’t pick it up, but I’m glad I did.
Hey Ed, John Greco and Movie Man!
I’m at school now, but I will be most eager to add my two cents when I get home this afternoon. Thanks again for these enthralling contributions on this American classic.
Great movie, review, and comment by joepardygirl. I love how this movie dives headlong into infidelity, divorce, sexism and suicide, none of which were dinner conversations at the time.
I also think MacLaine’s performance is great – she really makes us believe she is in love with two men at the same time.
An American classic; great review; fascinating comment thread.
John Greco:
What a fantastic comment there bringing in the reality of the “office” experience, the astute reference to Vidor’s THE CROWD (one of the greatest of all silent films) the work cubes and the television series “The Office.” Your confirmation of the accuracy of the office ‘parties’ as wel as your validation of the film’s exquisite performances is dead-on, methinks, as is yet another reminder of Oscar’s inept decision-making. Thanks very much for enlightening the discorse again!
Ed: I am admittedly slightly surprised that you may have this as Wilder’s greatest film–I was thinking you would tabe SUNSET BOULEVARD–but who can blame you? The humanism point there is irrefutable and that’s a telling point there about Baxter. Typically superlative comment.
Movie Man: I would love to see that Cousins volume, your enthusiasm does make it quite appealing. LOL on that Sparrow dwarfing Buster cover! Thanks again for your much-valued contributions here.
Daniel: Well, it seems you are right on with your own insights–no those issues were certainly not ‘dinner conversations’ at the time, that’s why the film was almost scandelous, but no more scandelous than MIDNIGHT COWBOY was in 1969, when it also won the same Best Picture prize captured by THE APARTMENT. Thank You.
Joe: Yep, that pretty much assesses it, thanks again, our very good friend.
Depending on the day, I vacillate between thinking Sunset Boulevard or The Apartment is Wilder’s greatest. I did say *maybe* his best, for that very reason.
LOL Ed!!! I got ya! I suspected as much as I know you love both quite a bit.
I hate to strike a discordant note 😉 Just the first episode of Mad Men leaves this movie for dead.
I found The Apartment boring and unfunny, albeit not much worse than Some Like It Hot. When I read the praise here and elsewhere, I begin to doubt my sanity. It may have worked as a 40 minute sit-com episode, but as a feature it goes on far too long. The teary Shirley MacLaine leaves me cold, and Lemmon is simply annoying. The pedestrian cop-out ending is a big yawn. Most critics, a repentant Sarris for example, praise Wilder for losing his cynicism and finding his heart. For me the film only works when the scenario turns dark with Lemmon is at his lowest walks the streets and ends up in a bar where he hooks up with the dizzy dame (who btw IS funny).
Movie Man, my paperback copy of Cousins’ has a very serious black cover with simple text. I have read it cover-to-cover and it is an excellent primer with a wide scope. There are serious gaps though – for example Sam Fuller is only mentioned in passing in a chapter on silent film.
Tony, I’ll say one thing: I have never cared for SOME LIKE IT HOT. I do like THE APARTMENT, but as you know my Big Three Wilders are:
SUNSET BOULEVARD
ACE IN THE HOLE
DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Does anyone recall Shirley MacLaine’s comment after the Oscar ceremony? “I lost to a tracheotomy.”
Ha! R.D.
I did hear that, leave it to Shirley to inject that caustic wit! I guess she was entitled to it though, as her’s (MacLaine’s) was easily the better performance.
Thanks very much for that! LOL!
Tony, that’s true – actually I seem to recall noticing the exact same oversight of Fuller! – but for me it’s valuable in conjunction with many other film history books, so many of which don’t even touch on what lies beneath the many stones Cousins overturns.
I have a perverse pleasure in owning the copy with the cheesy cover; it makes a nice complement to the many careworn, hand-me-down or used-purchase tomes on my shelf and if nothing else, it’s a fun reminder of the dictum, which I repeated to Sam of “not judging a book by its cover.”
Oddly enough, I was more instantly charmed with The Apartment than with most other Wilder films I’ve seen. Not sure why – I just bought into it right away. I don’t think it’s the lack of cynicism (I loved it from the early moments when it still retains a dark, sardonic bite). But surely Shirley does not hurt (sorry, i couldn’t resist – insert umpteenth Airplane! joke here).
Anyway, back to my point about Cousin’s book being valuable in the large contexts of movie histories – I’ve always loved going over the same ground again and again, but with different approaches or perspectives. I think this is a trait many cinephiles share – hearing the same story repeated over and over, but with variations in the point of view and the style of the telling and the events recalled.
It reminds me of how, in high school, after completing an intensive, lengthy, high-level American history class (and doing quite well, I might add, just sayin’…), I informed my teacher that I was taking a brief class on the Cold War the following quarter. She seemed perplexed: why re-study what we’d just finished covering the class.
Same impulse, I guess.
Revisited this the other night… interesting to seek it out on the countdown (something I now plan on doing every time I watch an old movie that is in Allan’s countdown). Fun to read the old comments–one person even said one episode of ‘Mad Men’ is better! Ha! How daft!
I must say I think this is Wilder’s second best film (behind only ‘Ace in the Hole’) after these two it gets pretty neck and neck with all his classics (‘Sunset Boulevard’, ‘Double Indemnity’, ‘Lost in the Weekend’, and the very underrated ones: ‘Stalag 17’, ‘Witness for the Prosecution’, ‘The Fortune Cookie’, ‘One, Two, Three’, and ‘The Front Page’). This most recent viewing really made me think that this is the movie for celibates/asexuals. Perhaps this is me looking for something that is or isn’t there, but that’s what was most powerful to me this time. Think if Wilder could have used some Morrissey music on the soundtrack (‘I don’t mind if you forget me’ comes to mind)! Really a stone cold classic… after watching a Wilder I can’t get over how talented of a writer he was, it’s quite humbling.
Fun to read Vonnegut’s ‘DeadEye Dick’ with this one.
Nice one, Jamie. You can have a whale of a time when we get to the silent countdown, which I am counting down the days to.
I am largely ignorant to the silents (except for the titans that every film fan has seen) so I’m pretty excited as well.
I may have a question for you on the silents using Sam and your (I’m assuming I’m addressing Allan here) expertise. It’s sort of specific, and when I word it correctly I’ll email the both of you.
Email away, Jamie, but Sam is pretty clued up on around 90-95% of major silents.