Unrated, 2 hr. 5 min. Directed By:
Billy Wilder. Release Date:
Jun 15, 1960. DVD Release Date:
Jun 19, 2001.
About fifteen minutes in to The Apartment I started digging for my
Netflix envelope to see when it was made.
The black and white imagery immediately made me think 1950s, but the,
erm, behavior of the businessmen and women made me think that either someone
was having Peyton Place flashbacks,
or that America had hit the sexual revolution at this was the 1960s. I leaned more towards the 60s also because
Marilyn Monroe wasn’t cast, and she was in ALL the inappropriate movies of the
day.
I’m not sure what to think of Lemmon’s
C.C. Baxter. On the one hand, I hate him
a little for his inherent weakness. He
won’t stand up to his bosses, despite some discourtesy that should have
bordered on the criminal. Baxter was
helping five men commit adultery. He
held the winning hand and wouldn’t use it.
Pitiful. Then, enter Maclaine (a
frighteningly young Maclaine) as Ms. Kubelik, she’s beautiful, but
approachable, and he falls for her, but refuses to engage. It would be decades before the word “game”
could be applied to this situation from a linguistic context, but ole Bax
sorely needs some. He gets pushed around
by his landlady and his neighbors and seems to accept it with a chagrined
smile. On the other hand, Baxter IS a
good guy, perhaps the archetype behind the concept that nice guys finish
last.
I liked this movie. A lot.
It has an American culture that’s so far removed from our modern one
that I hardly recognize it. Casual wear
for men includes hats and ties. Women
wear hats, furs, and tons of jewelry.
The approach to marriage is flippant, seen as a duty, rather than
something… sacred. No wait, that I
recognized. Address between people is
formal, using Mr., Mrs., or Ms., or just last names. But I found it endearing, even though those
people were incredibly uptight, at least by my standards.
I really don’t have a single complaint
about this movie, and I love, love LOVE the chance to see these folks that I
know as actors in their sixties, if not older, back when they were so very
young. It was a bit strange, though, not
seeing Shirley Maclaine with what I think of as dyed red tresses, although the
hair is fairly similar. It was the hair
style that actually made me realize that I was looking at a much younger version
of the Shirley Maclaine I was familiar with.
The
Apartment is great and lighthearted,
something that you can use to pass the time, but I bet you’ll start to get
engrossed by the characters. They’re too
interesting to pass on. If you haven’t
seen this movie and are interested at all in this classics, this one should
make your list.
