The Apartment (1960) - film review

C.C. Baxter is a lowly clerk in one of New York’s leading insurance companies, but he has great ambitions.  To help his promotion prospects, he lends his apartment to his superiors who use it to entertain their various mistresses.   When Baxter’s scheme is rumbled by his boss, Mr Sheldrake, he expects to be sanctioned.   Instead, Sheldrake offers him a more senior job in exchange for the key to his apartment.  Baxter agrees willingly, not knowing that Sheldrake intends using the apartment to carry on his extra-marital affair with Fran, a lift girl whom Baxter secretly loves....

One of the all-time comedy classics of American cinema, The Apartment was among Billy Wilder’s biggest commercial and critical successes, showing him at his best as a director and screenwriter.  The film was nominated for no fewer than 10 Oscars, of which it won five – in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Screenplay and Best B&W Art Direction. It was later adapted into the Broadway musical comedy Promises, Promises, which was a great success and ran from 1968 to 1972. Wilder claimed that the idea for the film came to him whilst he was watching David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945) – the trigger being the scene where the two illicit lovers attempt to meet at a friend’s apartment. 

The film features the legendary Jack Lemmon in the second of his six collaborations with Billy Wilder – coming immediately after Some Like It Hot (1959).  In what is arguably the best performance of his career, Lemmon shows his flair for self-deprecating comedy in a memorable turn that brings moments of sublime hilarity and genuine pathos.  His co-stars are Fred MacMurray, who is perhaps best known as the lead actor in Double Indemnity (1944), also directed by Wilder, and Shirley MacLaine, early in her film career.  Whilst MacLaine lacks the confidence and allure that is apparent in later films, her sparky rapport with Jack Lemmon is one of the main reasons why the film is so enjoyable.

The Apartment combines a brilliantly constructed romantic comedy with an effective satire on marital infidelity and the world of commerce.  The conflict in Baxter’s life – between professional ambition and the need for personal love – is emphasised by the contrast between his home – a cramped den in which he strains spaghetti with a tennis racket – and his workplace, an immense, characterless office.  The latter is a powerful visual metaphor for the dehumanising influence of corporate growth and technological progress – people end up as mere cogs in one vast corporate machine.  As the film’s romantic individualistic hero, Jack Lemmon’s character bears a striking similarity with that played by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times.

© James Travers 2008

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