Billy Wilder's The Apartment
A lot of the most famous directors have had more than one legendary title to their name. Alfred Hitchcock has many. So does John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, and many others. But – and maybe I'm wrong – it seems that Billy Wilder has the largest inventory of classics. There's Double Indemnity (1944), the prototype for all erotic thrillers. Some Like It Hot, probably the greatest screwball comedy. Stalag 17, with Oscar-winning William Holden, and what "Hogan's Heroes" would have been if it had a dark side. The Lost Weekend, the first major picture to deal with alcohol abuse. And, of course, there's Sunset Boulevard, the most bizarre, and nastiest, picture dealing with the vanities and insecurities of Hollywood itself. The list goes on.
The Apartment is also a famous picture, having won Best Picture Oscar in 1960, and also for its blending of cynical comedy (a typical Wilder element) and sentimental drama. I don't like this film as much as a few of the others I've mentioned, but that's like saying, if I were a professor, that while three papers get a 99 percent grade, this one can only get, say, a 90. The Apartment is still a very good movie, especially when it remains rooted in its cynical vision of both corporate politics and sexual immorality.
Jack Lemmon is an employee at an insurance firm who works his way through upper management in a novel way. He loans out his apartment to sleazy, and married, executives needing a place to frolic with their mistresses. Lemmon hopes that these guys will then put in a good word to the boss, and give him a promotion, but in the meantime, he's stuck outside all night, catching cold, while his "guest" has all the comforts – and protection – of the apartment. Lemmon does eventually get the promotion, during an intense office meeting with the big guy (Fred MacMurray), but there's a twist. MacMurray also wants the key to his apartment, so he can carry on with his extramarital affair – the elevator girl (Shirley MacLaine) whom Lemmon had fallen for earlier on in the movie, only later finding out that she is the boss's mistress.
The comedy sours in the second half, as MacLaine attempts suicide by overdosing on Lemmon's sleeping pills after having yet another argument with MacMurray over his unwillingness to leave his wife. Significantly, the near-suicide occurs on Christmas Eve, and, after Lemmon finds out and get help, these two lonely people slowly get to know each other. At this point, it is clear that these two people will somehow get together, but much of the suspense truly lies in whether they will both let go of the things they so desperately want and that so viciously wounds them emotionally. For MacLaine, it's the need to be loved by MacMurray, and for Lemmon, it's the need to move up in the corporate world.
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