One of my favorite films to watch during the holiday season is Billy Wilder’s bittersweet film “The Apartment” a bittersweet comedy-drama that takes place during the Christmas season though it is a more than that.
Coming off the success of the brilliantly funny “Some Like it Hot” just the year before, Wilder was at his peak of creative success. He of course had many successes in the past; some of the most wonderful films to grace the screen are Billy Wilder creations. This time however, was the beginning of a professional working relationship between Wilder and Jack Lemmon that would span seven films starting with “Some Like it Hot”, followed by “The Apartment”, “Irma La Douce”, “The Fortune Cookie”, “The Front Page”, “Avanti” and “Buddy, Buddy.” 
C.C. Bud Baxter (Lemmon) is the original lonely guy, an actuarial, crunching numbers for a large Insurance company. Baxter works at a drab grey desk in a large office building, populated by faceless individuals, with hundreds of other grey desks, all lined up in rows and columns. For those familiar with King Vidor’s “The Crowd”, this opening shot may seem similar. Wilder must have certainly been inspired by Vidor’s silent classic. Baxter starts work at 8:40 every morning and ends at 5:20 in the evening. Only thing is Baxter stays late most days, not because he is busy or ambitious, it just that his apartment is.…well, it is in use. You see Baxter loans out his apartment to four middle level executives on various nights for their extramarital liaisons. In exchange, the four executives praise Baxter at work writing glowing reports on him to senior management including putting in good words with Mr. Sheldrake (Fred Mac Murray) the head of personnel. When Baxter is at home, his life consists of frozen dinners, watching TV with constant commercial interruptions and cleaning up the empty liquor bottles that are left from that “night’s guests” escapades, which he leaves outside his apartment door for garbage pickup. This suggests, to his neighbors Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) and his wife, that Baxter leads a wild life of swinging parties with plenty of women.
At work, Baxter is smitten with the elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) and is continuously attempting to make small talk and get a date with her but never gets anywhere. When Mr. Sheldrake gets wind of what is going with Baxter’s apartment he confronts Baxter informing that what is going on is not good for the company image. However, instead of being fired, as 
Baxter was beginning to suspect was going to happen, Sheldrake wants to book an evening, Christmas Eve, for himself and a lady friend. What Baxter does not know is that Fran Kubelik is Sheldrake’s “lady friend,”
Come Christmas Eve things are not going well between Fran and Sheldrake. Fran is crying and Sheldrake keeps trying to comfort and convince her, this is not a good time for him to split with his wife. With things still unresolved Sheldrake needs to get home, it’s getting late and after all, it is Christmas Eve. Not buying Fran a present, he hands her one hundred dollars. As Sheldrake prepares to leave, Fran begins to undress. Sheldrake asks what she is doing. She responds that she thought since he paid he was entitled to get something for his money.
Baxter meanwhile, has been at a bar with a floozy who he now brings back to his apartment only to find Fran overdosed on pills and laid flat out on his bed. Baxter and his neighbor, Dr. Dreyfuss, manage to keep her alive filling her with coffee and pacing her back and forth.
Sheldrake’s marriage falls apart after his secretary and former lover (Edie Adams) spills the beans on his extramarital affairs to his wife who starts divorce proceedings. Now living at an athletic club, Sheldrake demands Baxter’s apartment for New Year’s Eve so he can continue to pursue Fran. Baxter refuses and quits his job
On New Years Eve, just before midnight, Sheldrake tells Fran, who after all the rejections, heartbreaks and suicide attempt is still giving him another chance, how Baxter refused to let him use the apartment, especially if it he was going to be with her. Finally, the bell rings for Fran as she realizes that Baxter may be the man she’s been looking for. As the New Year rings in Fran dumps Sheldrake and runs to Baxter’s place. In the apartment as they begin to play gin rummy, a confused Baxter proclaims his love for her. “You hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolute adore you.” She looks at him, and replies with the final words “Shut up and deal.” 
This is Wilder bringing us to the brink of sentimentally and then reeling us back in. Instead of the expected response of Fran telling him that she loves him too, she tells him, let’s just play plays and see how it goes.
The germ of the idea for this movie had been with Wilder for many years going back to the 1940’s. There were actually two incidents that triggered Wilder’s imagination. In the documentary “Inside the Apartment” which comes as a supplement to the DVD collector’s edition the various interviewees, tell about a scene in “Brief Encounter” where the two married lovers meet at the apartment of a friend. Billy thoughts were not so much on the lovers than on what the guy who lent the apartment does when he gets back his place and the still warm sheets. The second incident involved a true Hollywood scandal. Actress Joan Bennett was having an affair with talent agent Jennings Lang. Bennett’s husband producer Walter Wanger found out and shot Lang, wounding him. One of the facts to come out about all this was that Lang had been taking Bennett to an apartment belonging to a subordinate at the talent agency! This was intriguing to Wilder who summarized the underling thought that by lending his apartment out to a higher up was possibly a good career path. 
The idea for “The Apartment” had to remain stored away on Wilder’s mind for years because he knew he could not do much with it due to the censorship standards of the day, which forbid showing adultery in a movie or at least unrepentant adultery. By 1960, the censorship laws were starting to crack and Wilder, ever the provocateur, decided the time was right. He just had a big success with “Some Like it Hot” which already pushed some buttons with the see-through dress Monroe wore during her “I Wanna Be Loved by You” number. Now it was time to try something else.
The film is also unique in its mix of comedy and drama. This was something else that was rarely done especially to the extent it is here, after all how many times do you see the leading lady attempt suicide in a comedy? However, real life is many times a mixture of comedy and drama and Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s script is a perfect blend that despite more than forty-five years since it was made is still amazingly fresh.
Much credit needs to be given to Jack Lemmon whose career received a big boost with Wilder’s previous film “Some Like it Hot” and here for the first time Lemmon is carrying a film. It is his performance, that of a guy whose sleazy way of getting ahead in the corporate world is to loan out his apartment to middle level executives and still come across as a decent loveable, average guy. Lemmon’s inner decency makes the character of C.C. Baxter likable. Lemmon, like his co-star, Shirley MacLaine was nominated for an Academy Award. MacLaine was another perfect choice for the role of Fran Kubelik the elevator operator. Sweet, vulnerable, and like Lemmon looking to improve her standing in life, only for her it is finding a good man with a good job. Unfortunately, the man she hooked up with, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) is using her, and just about everyone else. Jack Kruschen received a Best Supporting Actor nomination as Baxter’s neighbor, Dr. Dreyfuss. Surprisingly Fred MacMurray was passed over for his role as the slimy personnel boss. Wilder seems to be able to bring out the “worst” in Fred MacMurray with two wonderful performances, first in “Double Indemnity” and then again here in “The Apartment.” There is also a wonderful cast of supporting players who are all worth mentioning and have graced more than one Wilder film,. Ray Walston, Joyce Jameson, Hope Holiday and Joan Shawlee.
The 1960’s started gloriously for Billy Wilder with Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Picture Academy Awards. He would continue to ride a big wave with “One, Two Three”, in 1961 and “Irma La Douce” in 1963, however, starting in 1964 Wilder’s road would begin to get a bit shaky. That year, “Kiss, Me Stupid”, another tale of adultery, received terrible reviews and was even condemned by the then powerful Roman Catholic Legion of Decency. Looked at it today, the film is funnier than the critics at the time wrote and not as “dirty” as everyone seemed to think at the time. In 1996, Wilder came back with “The Fortune Cookie”, the first paring of Lemmon and Walter Matthau followed by another failure “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.” In the 1970’s Lemmon again worked with Billy in “Avanti” followed by a third remake of “The Front Page” reuniting Wilder, Lemmon and Matthau. In 1978, Wilder made the underrated “Fedora”, with William Holden and in 1981, one final film, the disappointing “Buddy, Buddy” with Lemmon and Matthau.
There is nothing disappointing about “The Apartment.” The film still holds up and is an excellent alternative to many of the insipid sugary-coated holiday releases that overload the Christmas season.
“The Apartment” will be on TCM Dec 17th at 2:45PM
Thank you for this. I’ll keep it in mind for I’ll be wanting an Xmas movie this year. I watched _The Dead_ last year — which takes place Xmas time.
Ellen
“The Apartment” was the first “favorite movie” I ever had, and I still love it. In 1960, you couldn’t turn on the AM radio without hearing the theme music. I once heard Wilder say that when he started a movie, he didn’t know if it would be a comedy or a tragedy. This remark gives one pause to wonder about many of his films, especially “Sunset Boulevard,” and made me realize how his comedies have serious elements and his serious movies funny ones. But I don’t think the two modes were ever more intertwined than in “The Apartment.” I can’t think of another movie that achieved this exact blend of the serious and the funny, or attempted to do so with such success.
R.D.
I agree and I believe a lot of credit also has to go to Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine’s performances. Thorughout their careers these two have given some us some fine work.
“The Apartment” is one of my top favorites also, though for me, the nod for my favorite Wilder film goes to “Some Like it Hot.” Wilder, along with Hitchcock and Scorsese are my most admired film directors. I love Wilder’s wit and Hitchcock and Scorsese’s visual style.
[...] Review of The Apartment (1960)Published on Twenty Four Frames, written by John Greco. Stumbling into the area of adding the unnecessary editorial I must say that The Apartment is one of my favorite films of all time starring Jack Lemmon. In his review of the film John talks about how this film was proof that Jack Lemmon was able to carry a film in a leading role without a glitch. [...]