Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT blends his customary harsh cynicism with a humane streak that appears only fleetingly in his films. It stars Jack Lemmon as C.C. Baxter, an office clerk who curries favor with the executives in his office by giving them the key to his small apartment for the odd afternoon dalliance. Among them his is his callous boss, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who Baxter eventually learns is using his place to sleep with Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the sweet elevator operator the clerk has loved from afar. When Sheldrake coldly dumps the vulnerable young woman, she tries to commit suicide, but is saved by the intervention of Baxter. As the clerk lovingly nurses the young woman back to health he begins to realize, with the help of epigrammatic neighbor Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen), exactly how much of a fool he has been. Wilder brilliant depiction of the average American office as a place of brutality, coldness, and alienation conjure up Kafka and Marx. The director seduces the audience into what appears to be an unusually frank sex comedy, but turns the tables in displaying the consequences of the executive's cold indifference. Lemmon and MacLaine both give career performances and MacMurray is memorable as the blandly smiling snake.
THE APARTMENT was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1994.
The story was later turned into a Broadway musical entitled PROMISES, PROMISES.
Excerpt: "Miss Kubelik, one doesn't get to be a second administrative assistant around here unless he's a pretty good judge of character, and as far as I'm concerned you're tops. I mean, decency-wise and otherwise-wise."--C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) to Miss Kubelick (Shirley MacLaine)
"You know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe--shipwrecked among eight million people. Then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were."--Baxter to Kubelick
DVD Features:
Keep Case
Full Frame - 1.33
Widescreen - 2.35
Audio:
(unspecified) - French, Spanish
Mono - English
Subtitles - English - Closed Captioned
Subtitles - English, Spanish - Optional
Additional Release Material:
Audio Commentary: Bruce Block - Film Producer/Historian
Documentary:
1. "Inside THE APARTMENT"
2. "Tribute to Jack Lemmon"
Director of Photography
Joseph La Shelle:
Review 1:
"...Fresh....[MacLaine's performance] breaks through Lemmon's brittle good cheer..." -- Rating: A-
Source: Entertainment Weekly
pp.70-2 10/21/1994
Review 2:
5 stars out of 5 -- "Lemmon gives on of his best performances ever, in a part written specifically for him..."
Source: Ultimate DVD
p.89 05/01/2008
Review 3:
"...This seductive, bittersweet 1960 classic was Billy Wilder's last great film....Its layers of satire and genuine tenderness resonate..." -- 5 out of 5 stars
Source: Total Film
p.101 01/01/2000
Review 4:
"By the time he made THE APARTMENT, Wilder had become a master at a kind of sardonic, satiric comedy that had sadness at its center."
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
07/22/2001
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