93. The Apartment


    (1960) directed by Billy Wilder

Next: #92. A Place In the Sun
Prev: #94. Goodfellas


C'mon, CC, shouldn't you be drinking your lunch?
My Thoughts Before I Watched It

I had very few thoughts about this. I knew Billy Wilder directed Some Like It Hot, which was a riot, so I figured that The Apartment might be more of the same. Or maybe not. I had no idea. Remember that. I was unaware!

The Premise

Jack Lemmon is C.C. Baxter, whose method of climbing the corporate ladder is to loan out his apartment for senior executive hanky-panky, until he falls for one of their little pieces of fluff.

Notes and Stuff
  • What exactly is this movie supposed to be? Is it a comedy, a tragedy, a scathing indictment of Eisenhower-era corporate culture? I never quite figured that out and I guess it colored my opinion of the entire movie.
  • That is one company that needs a mission statement. I mean, with the row after row of worker bees, the kiss-assy hierarchical structure, the grim impersonality of the office, this snapshot might make me wonder whether we were in red-blooded 1950's capitalist America or in some socialist worker's paradise.
  • People sure drank a lot back then. Better minds than mine have noticed how, in the 1950's, at the height of the American empire, people regularly smoked in their offices, chased skirts, and drank three-martini lunches. Now you can't do that anyplace (presumably for the sake of the children) and we, as a country, are in like 143rd place in everything. Just food for thought...
  • Shirley Maclaine (Fran)'s charming, friendly manner in the elevator is her best since she was royal courtier in the court of Charlemagne.
  • C.C. pays $85 a month for an apartment 2 blocks off from Central Park. This is the most incomprehensible Manhattan-real-estate conundrum since the last time I tried to figure out how the "Friends" afforded their pads. You can't rent library books in NY for $85 a month.
  • Speaking of culture clash, I've lived in the same building for nearly 2 years, and I don't either see my landlord or know more than 2 of my neighbors' names. C.C. not only knows all his neighbors, they all think he's some kind of iron-livered sex maniac.
  • When Mr. Sheldrake gives Shirley Maclaine the $100 bill, she gives him her best disdainful look since Hannibal told her he was going to try to attack Rome with elephants.
  • Not to mention the fact that Fred Macmurray and Ray Walston in this movie are babe magnets. And it can't be just because they're powerful businessmen; they must have real honest, friendly qualities to attract all these secretaries and office floozies.
  • You know, the doctor was right. C.C. needs to "be a mensch". First he lets his bosses walk all over him, then he is ready to let Fran walk out of his life without so much as a fight. I haven't seen someone walked all over like this since Seattle traded Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe for Heathcliff Slocumb.
  • And when Fran does turn her back on C.C., I think it's the greatest betrayal Shirley Maclaine performed since she, as Benedict Arnold, turned Fort Ticonderoga over to the British.
  • The final tally: 83 martinis, 11 beers, 36 glasses of wine, 14 Scotches, 52 other assorted liquors, and a bottle of sleeping pills. Phi Kap would be proud.

Best Line

Fran: Why can't I fall in love with somebody nice, like you?
C.C.: Yeah, well - that's the way it crumbles. Cookie-wise.

Summary

This movie never really did it for me. I was mostly too aggravated at C.C. to really root for him, I kept seeing Shirley Maclaine's acting in the context of her 164 documented past lives, and the whole story never gave me that Hook that great movies are supposed to. Was it awful? No. But was it better than Pulp Fiction? Ha ha ha. Movie-wise.

Cast

Jack Lemmon as the determined C.C. Baxter, Shirley Maclaine as Fran, the elevator operator, The Venerable Bede, Mrs. John Wilkes Booth, Pope Innocent III, and Dolly Madison, Fred Macmurray as Babe Magnet #1, Ray Walston as Babe Magnet #2, and Jack Kruschen as the doctor.