The Apartment 1960 - Film Review

I watched this film ’The Apartment’ 1960 around mid-December before the madness of Christmas and the review has been sitting in a file waiting for me to finish the review. It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon watching this classic and with Jack Lemmon one of my favourite actors.

Based around the Christmas and New Year party season in New York Lemmon plays CC Baxter a minor office worker who loans out the key to his apartment to a selected number of executives from the company where he works for rendezvous of a sexual nature. He hopes by doing this trade-off he can secure promotion for himself. At the start of the film, the characters are less than wholesome the men are married; there dates know this but overall hope they will leave their wives.

The love interest in the film comes from Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine who plays Fran a lift girl having an affair with Lemmon’s boss. After spending, the evening at Lemmon’s its obvious he will not leave is wife and when he leaves, Fran takes some pills. It’s left to Lemmon to clean up the mess as he helps her recover at his apartment.

The bush-off for Fran

It has an absolutely top-notch cast, featuring Jack Lemmon (at his wryly-humorous best) Shirley MacLaine (a glowing screen presence); Fred MacMurray (smarm personified). They also benefit from a clever, perceptive, and timelessly relevant script by Billy Wilder, under his capable direction. Though there are plenty of brilliant one-liners, the best of the dialogue feels true and real, which adds to the feeling that you've known Baxter for years.

The Apartment is more of a drama than a comedy and balances the two elements perfectly. Just after one of the more dramatic moments of the film, we see Lemmon straining his pasta with a tennis racquet. The use of the doctor and his wife in supporting roles are completely there for comedy and yet add so much to the film. The ending also rates up there with the best of all time using an old device that doesn't seem at all clichéd in this film. Some say that "Some like it hot" was Wilder's best, but I have always disagree! This film is better.

The Apartment is better and surely would have made my top ten had the first hour not been so predictable but it is close.