Plot Summary

An ambitious insurance company employee rents out his apartment to company executives for their extra-marital affairs in hopes of a promotion.

Review

C.C. (Bud) Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a low-level but ambitious employee of an insurance company in Manhattan.  Every day, he reports to work in a massive room where hundreds of other employees process insurance applications and claims.  Unlike most to the other employees, he often works late.  In part, this is because he is trying to impress his superiors with his work ethic.  On the other hand, it is often because those same superiors are using his apartment for their extra-marital affairs.  This unorthodox plan seems to be working as his superiors give glowing reviews of his work to the personnel manager, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray).  Sheldrake summons Baxter to his office for the long-awaited promotion.

It turns out Sheldrake knows about the apartment and wants to use it that very night.  As compensation for the short notice, Sheldrake gives Baxter two theater tickets.  Baxter invites his secret crush, elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine).  She accepts but says she has to see someone first and will meet him at the theater.  She never shows up and Sheldrake, a former fling with whom she intended to end things with that very evening, turns out to be the reason why.  This time, he assures her, he is going to leave his wife for her.

He is lying to her again and when she finds out, she takes an overdose of sleeping pills in Baxter’s apartment.  Only the quick intervention of Baxter’s doctor neighbor saves her life.  As Fran recovers for several days in the apartment, she and Baxter form a bond.  Sheldrake’s wife learns of his affairs and throws him out.  Free to pursue Fran, he asks Baxter for the use of the apartment again, leaving both Baxter and Fran with tough decisions.

Watching The Apartment, you wonder how it ever made it past the notorious Hollywood Code.  At times, you also wonder why it is most often categorized as a comedy.  While Baxter’s method of climbing the corporate ladder and his schedule juggling add levity to the beginning of the film, the subject matter quickly turns serious.  The Hollywood Code limited any mention of marital infidelity for years, yet here we meet multiple men all having secret affairs and another man using the affairs to advance his own career.  Suicide was not necessarily unknown in films either but most of the time it was seen in war, historical or perhaps crime dramas.  An attempted suicide in a romantic comedy may seem a bit tame sixty years later but it pushed some limits in 1960.

Rather than a simple comedy, The Apartment is brilliant satire brought to the screen by writer and director Billy Wilder.  The absurd situations reflect upon a late-1950s American culture where the Hollywood Code paints one picture while the reality is another.  While the code might fail to acknowledge it, infidelity, corporate greed and suicide all exist in the real America.  For some viewers, the Apartment may appear to foreshadow the sexual revolution of the 1960s. I have always seen it as an expose of what was happening all along.

The Apartment won five Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.  It was Billy Wilder’s second win and eighth nomination for Best Director.  Wilder shared a second Oscar for Best Screenplay with I.A.L. Diamond, his third win in that category and the second time he won both Best Director and Best Screenplay.  He had previously accomplished this same feat with The Lost Weekend (1945).  Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively.  

The film remains popular today with Rotten Tomatoes rating it 94% by both critics and audience. 

Why You Should Watch It

The Apartment is full of absurd situations and witty dialogue. 

Jack Lemmon as C.C. Baxter and Fred MacMurray as Jeff Sheldrake are perfectly cast. 

Things to Watch For

The seemingly endless room in which Baxter and thousands of other employees toil every day was a very creative illusion fashioned by the film’s designers.  Near the front, adults worked at full sized desks. In the middle, children work at smaller desks.  Finally, miniature figures work at miniature desks.  Together, it creates the illusion of thousands of people working in a vast room. 

In one scene, Fran’s brother Karl punches Baxter.  Jack Lemmon did not move in time.  Instead of miming the scene, the punch connected, and Lemmon was knocked to the floor.  Wilder chose to use the more realistic take in the final film.

Billy Wilder loved to relate a story from the film in which Jeff Sheldrake is supposed to tip a shoeshine boy a quarter.  MacMurray kept missing the coin flip so Wilder suggested he use a larger 50-cent piece.  MacMurray, who Wilder claimed was extremely frugal, complained that he could not do this as he would never tip that much. 

Did You Know? 

The Apartment was the last classic era black and white film to win Best Picture.  Since The Apartment, only two black and white films, Schindler’s List (1993) and The Artist (2011) have won Best Picture. 

The story was based on several real-life events.  In one case, a Hollywood agent was shot by a producer for having an affair with the producer’s wife in a low-level employee’s apartment.  In another, a friend of co-writer I.A.L. Diamond broke up with his girlfriend only to have her commit suicide in his bed. 

Actor Paul Douglas was offered the role of Sheldrake but died of a sudden heart attack only two days before the project was to start filming. 

Fred MacMurray said that he was often confronted by women on the street after appearing in the film.  One of them reportedly hit him with her purse while berating him for making such a “dirty filthy movie.” 

Rating (20)

Overall (5) Brilliant satire from the mind of writer and director Billy Wilder. 

Star Power (5) A great cast and great director.

Movie History (5) The last classic era black-and-white film to win best picture. 

Innovation (5) A film that exposed the absurdity of the Hollywood code.