Day 143: The Apartment (1960)

Movie #92 – The Apartment (1960) - 125 min, cert PG.

C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a corporate wage slave, just one amongst a sea of faces in a vast office of identical desks. He lives alone in an apartment in the city, but he lends out his apartment several evenings a week to some of the managers within the company so they can take their mistresses and girlfriends there with no questions asked. Baxter is attracted to Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), one of the elevator girls in the building but discovers that she is the mistress of his boss Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) and has been in his apartment.

This is a clever little piece about two downtrodden employees caught in the rat race. Both Baxter and Kubelik are being used by their superiors. They are aware that they are being used, but they go along with it in exchange for promises of rewards that may or may not materialise. Baxter wants his own office and is promised a promotion, while Kubelik wants a proper relationship with Sheldrake, so Sheldrake promises her that he will leave his wife. Both seem reluctant to commit to each other as they are so accustomed to being let down, and it’s only after Kubelik attempts suicide in Baxter’s apartment and he finds himself nursing her back to health, that they start to open up to each other.

Billy Wilder is very good at balancing comedy with drama. He did it well in Some Like it Hot and he does it well here.

Score – 8/10. A very enjoyable film.

Next up is Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, a film famous for its futuristic vision. Like the vast majority of people, I’ve seen clips of it but never sat down and watched it through.