The Apartment (1960)

• Review: *** ½ (out of ****)
• Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Hope Holiday, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens, Johnny Seven, Joyce Jameson, Willard Waterman, David White, Edie Adams
• Director: Billy Wilder
• Screenplay: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
• Length: 125 min.
• MPAA Rating: Approved (PCA #19647)

There’s nothing worse than an unwanted guest who overstayshis welcome. The Apartment tells thestory of one such series of visitors that makes one lonely bachelor’s lifemiserable.

C.C. ‘Bud’ Baxter (Jack Lemmon) has gotten into the habit ofloaning out the key to his apartment. Those who take him up on his generousoffer have one thing in common. They are going there to hide from their wives. Infidelity,an apparently common practice at Bud’s insurance firm, creates an even moreuncomfortable position when the human resources manager Jeff Sheldrake (FredMacMurray) finds out and begins wanting to use it himself.

All of these moves ensure his promotion but his arrangementsare about get quite a bit more complicated when he finally gets up the courageto ask the beautiful elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) out on adate with tickets Sheldrake gave him. However, there’s a catch. Fran justhappens to be Sheldrake’s mistress, a position which he assures her is onlytemporary until he can divorce his wife.

Comedy isn’t the best word to describe The Apartment. The film certainly has some funny moments, many ofthem deriving from Bud’s encounters with his associates; however, the film hasa lot more dark and depressing undertones exemplified in Fran’s suicide attemptin Bud’s own apartment. It’s from this attempt on her life that she finallycomes to know and love Bud but things get in the way as they often do and theirlife together is threatened by a guilty and suddenly-divorced Sheldrake.

Lemmon’s superb comic and dramatic timing keep The Apartment energetic and involving.Success or failure, the audience is right there to empathize with hissituation. MacLaine, in one of her earliest lead performances, does asufficient job playing cat-and-mouse with Bud. On one hand, she wantsdesperately to be with the man she had loved for so long but she has found anew and different kind of love with Bud.

MacMurray, whose television work on My Three Sons might convince later generations that this role is adeparture for him, but anyone familiar with DoubleIndemnity will realize this character isn’t new for him. He’s not at hisabsolute best here but he gives the role the weight it needs.

The Apartment isone of several films in writer-director Billy Wilder’s career. It’s the kind ofcareer many directors would dream of. SunsetBlvd., Witness for the Prosecution and The Lost Weekend just to name afew. Wilder’s ability to create believable characters and put them in unusualsituations that, in other hands, would seem out of place. The Apartment is characteristic of this style and though theperformances aren’t as spectacular as those other three listed films, it isnevertheless a noteworthy achievement.

-Wesley Lovell (November 13, 2006)