The Apartment
PG 125 mins
PG 125 mins
One of director Billy Wilder’s best-loved and most acerbic works, THE APARTMENT stars a superb Jack Lemmon (SOME LIKE IT HOT) as C. C. Baxter, an office clerk who carries favour with the executives in his office by giving them the key to his small apartment for the odd afternoon dalliance.
Among them 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 girl 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.
“Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning romance-farce isn’t a Christmas movie exactly…but the holiday season, as it specifically manifested itself in the drunken, libidinous era of the Mad Men early 1960s, is central to its maudlin, sentimental tone. Which is, of course, what makes it absolutely brilliant, as if the entire cast and crew were operating through a fug of whisky fumes and a cacophony of party tooters.” – The Guardian