by John Greco
Office politics has changed a lot over the years but sex in the workplace, in one form or another, is alive and well. Billy Wilder’s superb comedy/drama is a time capsule look back at one man’s struggle on how to succeed in business by lending out his apartment to four middle level company executives on various nights for their extramarital liaisons. In exchange, the four executives praise our antihero at work, writing glowing reports on him to senior management, including putting in good words with Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) the top dog at personnel.
C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is the original lonely guy, an actuarial, crunching out numbers for a major insurance company. Baxter works at a drab grey desk in a large corporate office building, populated by faceless individuals all working at hundreds of other drab grey desks.
Baxter’s home life consists of frozen dinners, watching TV and cleaning up the empty liquor bottles left over from the night’s escapades, bottles which he leaves outside his apartment door for garbage pickup, suggesting, to his neighbors, Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) and his wife, that Baxter leads a wild life of swinging parties.
When Mr. Sheldrake gets wind of what is going at Baxter’s apartment he confronts Baxter informing him that such goings on is not good for the company’s image. However, instead of being fired, as Baxter suspected was going to happen, Sheldrake wants to book the apartment for himself that evening. He gives Baxter two tickets to the then Broadway hit musical, “The Music Man” as compensation. After work Baxter, with tickets in hand, builds up the courage to ask elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) who is the girl of his dreams to see the play with him that night. She agrees. Little does Baxter know that Fran is Sheldrake’s mistress and the girl he plans on taking to his apartment!
In between the many laughs, there is a sad tale about how far people, even good people, as Baxter and Fran are, will go to get ahead in the business world. Morals are tossed aside when seduced by morally bankrupt but more powerful people making promises of promotions and indecent proposals. You see Baxtcr is looking for the key to the executive washroom, he wants out from behind the drab grey desk, no longer wanting to be one of the crowd, while Fran is looking to become the wife of an important executive and stop having to smile at every leering male jerk who enters her elevator.
The germ of the idea for this movie had been with Wilder for many years going back to the 1940’s. There were actually two incidents that triggered Wilder’s imagination. First a scene from the movie, “Brief Encounter” where the two married lovers meet at the apartment of a friend. Billy thoughts were not so much on the lovers than on what the guy who lent the apartment does when he gets back his place and the sheets are still warm. The second incident involved a true Hollywood scandal. Actress Joan Bennett was having an affair with talent agent Jennings Lang. Bennett’s husband producer Walter Wanger found out about it and shot Lang, wounding him. One of the facts to come out about all this was how Lang had been taking Bennett to an apartment belonging to a subordinate at the talent agency. This was intriguing to Wilder who surmised the underling must have believed that by lending his apartment out to a higher up he was making a good career move.
The idea for “The Apartment” remained stored away in Wilder’s mind for years because he knew he could not do much with it due to the censorship standards of the day which forbid showing adultery in a movie or at least unrepentant adultery. By 1960, the censorship laws were starting to crack and Wilder, ever the provocateur, decided the time was right. He just had a big success with “Some Like it Hot” which already pushed some buttons with the see-through dress Monroe wore during her “I Wanna Be Loved by You” number. Now it was time to try something else.
The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is a brilliant blend of farce and melancholy, reflecting on the 1950’s, early 1960’s, pre women’s lib office politics, corporate culture and the general widespread disregard for women in the workplace as equals. Additionally, the film blatantly looks at the dark side of ambition, the drive to succeed at any ethical expense.
And it all takes place during the Christmas season! Bittersweet yet heartfelt. The film’s ending is justifiably one of cinema’s best known and moving.
While all the characters are sleazy in their ambitions you still find yourself rooting for Baxter and Fran and this has a lot to do with the extremely fine performances from Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Lemmon manages to make Baxter come across as a decent loveable, average guy and I believe this is due to Lemmon’s real life inner decency that despite his character’s moral ethics or lack of, you still like him. It the same with Shirley MacLaine who was a perfect choice for the role of Fran Kubelik. Sweet, vulnerable, and like Lemmon’s character looking to improve her standing in life, only for her it is finding a good man with a good job. Unfortunately, Sheldrake the man she hooked up with was just using her. Both Lemmon and MacLaine were nominated for Academy Awards that year. Jack Kruschen received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as Baxter’s neighbor, Dr. Dreyfuss. Surprisingly Fred MacMurray was passed over for his role as the slimy personnel boss. In the two times they have worked together, Wilder has been able to bring out the “worst” in Fred MacMurray with two superlative performances, first in “Double Indemnity” and here in “The Apartment.” There is also a wonderful cast of supporting players who are all worth mentioning and have graced more than one Wilder film; Ray Walston, Joyce Jameson, Hope Holiday and Joan Shawlee are all treasures.
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Wonderful essay. Way to go JOHN!!!!
I love this film so much I make it a point to watch it once or twice a year (more if it’s on TV in my office during the late night shift that I work). However, with all of my viewings of this film, I really have a hard time with calling this one an out-n-out comedy. Yes, for sure there are some screamingly funny moments in the film (particularly when C.C. picks up the Cuban jockey’s wife at a dive bar-“He’s doing 10 years in prison for doping a horse”), but the melancholy that you speak of in your essay pervades almost every spry moment and romantic notion. THE APARTMENT may, even against my judgement, be a comedy but, it’s most definately one of the darkest comedies that will grace this count (along with the yet to be seen DR. STRANGLOVE, UNFAITHFULLY YOURS, FARGO and Woody Allen’s wonderful BULLETS OVER BROADWAY).
Diamond and Wilder’s screenplay is an acidic crackerjack that brings themes back to full circle after being absent since the set up in the earlier parts of the film (“that’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise”) and the moral play is as honest as anything ever written in film up to that point in cinematic history. As for the look and the direction of the film, Wilder is on fire, using alot of what made SUNSET BOULEVARD so successful, and all the time borrowing from others work to make deeper statements about the predicaments of these very real characters (the master shot of C.C.’s office floor is directly lifted from King Vidors silent classic, THE CROWD, showing the main character lost in a sea of nameless drones).
The performances are all top-notch, with MacMurray a stand out in the supporting roles and being so slimey and crass as to make his turn in DOUBLE INDEMNITY look like a priest in comparison. Lemmon has the role of his career as the main protagonist and his turn is a tour-de-force of comic timing and heartfelt reactions (I love the way he accidently squirts the nasal spray across the room in reaction to Shelldrake threatening to fire him in the early meeting sequence). Jack was always so much more than a mere actor and his humanity and self deprication are perfect avenues to investigate when creating this, his finest character on screen.
But, if there is a shining jewel to this crown then it most definately is the star making turn of Shirley MacLaine. I can’t help but admit that I fell in love with every aspect of MacLaine, as personality, an actress, a character with her work in this film. At once innnocent and helpful to the point of angelic charm, she is also smolderingly sexual, a kitten that you can imagine being the constant source of whistles and head turning the moment she walks through a hall on the way to the water cooler. However, it’s her moments of lost self-worth, primarily in her conversations with Shelldrake in the Chinese restaurant, that open her up as a supremely gifted dramatic actress and her looks of despair and confused regret are enough to make me well up in tears. Her performance was, for me, the best thing about THE APARTMENT (after the script), and the best performance by an actress in a leading role in the year of 1960.
Dennis, Thanks very much! Your comments are always such in depth responses reflecting your love and passion for the work in hand. They always qualify as an excellent review in and of itself. Great stuff! Yes, this is a very dark film and I can understand it being questioned as a comedy (there are a few other films that have been in this countdown that I have found questionable but that is another story). That said, your love of this film comes through loud and clear. You’re absolutely right about Lemmon’s comic timing, he was brilliant here, and in SOME LIKE IT HOT too. At this period in his career he even made bad films like UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE watchable just for his performance. He rose about the material making you laugh even though you know this stuff is so bad. MacLaine cames away a star with this film and she too is just brilliant. There is a sweet vulnerability about her that makes you want to take care of her. Wilder along with Hitchcock and Blake Edwards were the first directors I ever became aware of back in my younger days.
BTW – I very subtly, maybe a little too much so, allude to the Vidor’s The Crowd in my essay where I say, “You see Baxter is looking for the key to the executive washroom, he wants out from behind the drab grey desk, no longer wanting to be one of the crowd”…
One of my top ten films. I always felt that Jack Lemmon whould have won the Oscar for his performance. Having seen it again a year ago, it never fails to touch a chord in me.
Thanks Jacob, glad you are on board with this film.
The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is a brilliant blend of farce and melancholy, reflecting on the 1950′s, early 1960′s, pre women’s lib office politics, corporate culture and the general widespread disregard for women in the workplace as equals. Additionally, the film blatantly looks at the dark side of ambition, the drive to succeed at any ethical expense.
Yep, John, you state the case for this film superbly. The melancholic element is of course tinged with Wilder’s special brand of cynicism that is seen through most of his work, especially in SUNSET BOULEVARD and ACE IN THE HOLE. The economic screenplay of course explores human relationships in an acute condemnation of American society. Each of the principals deliver landmark performances in this acerbic, ultimately tragic drama-comedy. Just a great piece John!
Thanks Sam! I love Wilder for what I consider his honest cynicism. This film, ACE IN THE HOLE, SUNSET BLVD, STAGLAG 17, and KISS ME, STUPID to name a few all take a dark look at life and people. He’s was brilliant at looking at the bad side of life.
This transcends the comedy genre, but in so doing it enriches the focus. It’s one of my favorite Wilders, and one I’ve returned to many times over the years. John’s review is just what the doctor ordered, so to speak, one that could be hardly improved.
Frank thanks for the kind words. Like you and most of the commenter’s here I watch this film often, at least once a year usually around this time of year.
John, great post on a great film. That “farce and melancholy” idea really gets to the heart of this film’s compelling blend of opposite tones. I’ve heard Wilder say in interviews that when he started to work on a screenplay, he never knew if it was going to be a comedy or a tragedy, and you can certainly believe it with this film, which in a way is both, often at the same time. (This certainly gives one pause when thinking of “Sunset Boulevard,” especially as his first idea was to make the film a comeback vehicle for Mae West!) Baxter and Fran are the characters we root for, for one reason because they’re the only really likable people in the movie. (Even the neighbor played by Jack Kruschen is a rather judgmental prig.) David Thomson criticizes Wilder’s films for being hard on the outside but having a soft center, but if he had carried the cynical tone through to the end of this film, it would for me be unbearable watching Baxter and Fran ground down by circumstances and their own shortcomings.
The film is a cautionary tale of the American obsession with succeeding at any price. Wilder asks the question “Is sacrificing your humanity too high a price to pay for success?” and answers “Yes.” Jack Lemmon and Shirley Mac Laine were my first ever favorite actor and actress, on the basis of this film. I don’t think Mac Laine was ever better. As for Lemmon, it would be a toss-up between this film and “Some Like It Hot,” an amazing dilemma because the performances are so completely different from each other.
Thanks Richard! We do have Jack Lemmon in common as he was my first ever favorite actor also! In the early to mid 60’s I watched him in everything he did. I have heard the accusations against Wilder, being hard on the outside and soft in the center. I think what he does is legit because it does not come across as phony, the characters and the situation believable. I am also a big fan of SOME LIKE IT HOT as you will see next week.
Great job John. This line perfectly conveys what I felt while watching this film In between the many laughs, there is a sad tale about how far people, even good people, as Baxter and Fran are, will go to get ahead in the business world.
There were many moments when I couldn’t help think about the quick sand the two of them were sinking further into. And that thought brought feeling of sadness & pity about the duo. While the film excels in the comedic tones, it also depicts the sadness of these characters perfectly. Quite the balancing act by Wilder. Also, glad you start off by pointing the timeless nature of this film as people will still do anything to get ahead in the workplace.
John, must confess I have never seen this, but you make it sound great. I will aim to fill in the gap soon.
One of the great, great films from Billy Wilder and an essential film for this countdown. I’m quite impressed with the high ranking for this, however not surprised considering it looks like more people voted for this than any other film to date on this countdown. Well done John. MacLaine and Lemmon are a wonderful pair, and you’re right, Wilder was able to bring the “worst” out of MacMurray! Ha!