Day 31: That's The Way It Crumbles, Cookie-Wise

THE APARTMENT (1960)

Directed by Billy Wilder

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurry, Ray Walston

C.C. Baxter (Lemmon) is doing alright for himself.  He’s got a good job at a New York insurance company.  He’s got a bit of an undeserved reputation as a playboy.  And his superiors at the company do nothing but sing his praises.  It could be because of all his hard work and dedication.  Or it could be because they pay him money on the side to use his apartment for their extramarital activities.  But because of this bit of friendly give-and-take, the higher-ups are grooming Baxter for a promotion, which he’s only too happy to accept.  Soon though, he becomes enamored with an elevator girl named Fran (MacLaine).  When he finally works up the nerve to ask her out, it comes to light that she’s the main extramarital squeeze of the company’s big boss, Mr. Sheldrake (MacMurry). 

All the trappings for your typical romantic comedy are set up in the first act, but The Apartment takes a much more dramatic turn than you might expect.  Fran is unhappy being the latest of Mr. Sheldrake’s romantic conquests and, while in Baxter’s apartment, tries to kill herself with sleeping pills.  Baxter returns to find her and calls for his neighbor, Dr. Dreyfuss (Walston).  As it turns out, what with all the carryings-on at all hours of the night, everyone in the building thinks Baxter is a hard-living, hard-loving cad.  But as with most things, Baxter is too timid to tell anyone the truth about this, even if it means his neighbors think rather poorly of him.

This was a pretty daring film for its time, which is what I’ve come to expect from Billy Wilder.  He was always trying to push people’s buttons.  He’s tackled such taboo subjects as alcoholism (The Lost Weekend), Hollywood’s shoddy treatment of its former stars (Sunset Boulevard) and even featured Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as cross dressers (Some Like It Hot) long before most Hollywood directors dared.  And here, he deals with philandering corporate hot-shots and suicide.  Of course, the film is about much more than that, but to even mention such things (let alone, show them) in a film in the late 50’s/early 60’s must have made it hard for a studio to green-light the film, let alone get it released.  This film, like Wilder himself, has guts.

As for the performances, Lemmon is spectacular.  It’s especially funny to see him as his usual nebbish-y self when all his neighbors think he’s Don Juan reborn.  But he’s also quite touching in the more serious scenes, and it’s great to see him eventually grow a backbone.  MacLaine is good as well as the naïve small-town girl in the big city, but she underplays her part in a cast full of actors who are usually playing for laughs.  She does okay, but she seems out of place, which depending on your point of view, is a good thing.  MacMurry is wonderfully hateable as Sheldrake, who doesn’t give a damn whose toes he steps on to get what he wants.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play the villain before, which he does rather well.  And if he has, maybe I need to check out more of his movies.

This is yet another Oscar Winner for Best Picture, and it seems an odd choice.  But Oscar has been known to favor films that buck the system from time to time.  And in an odd turn of events, it just so happens that the movie Baxter watches when he gets home from work is Grand Hotel, which I just watched myself a few days ago.  CO-INCIDENCE!?  Yeah, probably.