Oscars Retrospective: The Apartment (33rd Academy Awards Review)
The Apartment Suite~Adolph Deutsch - The Apartment
As the 50s were progressing and the Hays Code was slacking, romantic-comedies were slowly getting raunchier and raunchier. Romantic-comedies back in the 30s were scandalous in the sense that the women had agency and might show off some skin on their legs; romantic-comedies in the late 50s were scandalous because they showed off basically everything but their private parts and made much lewder innuendoes. In 1959, Billy Wilder directed Some Like It Hot, one of the most beloved and famous romantic-comedies of all time, which involved the two main characters cross-dressing and one of them being repeatedly hit on by another man. As we discussed previously, Some Like It Hot basically ended the Hays Code, leaving American movies essentially ratingless for the better part of the decade. The following year, a newly unchained Wilder released The Apartment, which isn’t as well-known as Some Like It Hot but those who have seen it usually agree that it’s another one of the great romantic-comedies.
The Apartment has a pretty darkly hilarious set-up as it revolves around New York City insurance salesman, C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) who is eager to rise up the corporate ladder so he works out a deal with his bosses. They put in a good word for him and, in exchange, they’ll be allowed to rent his apartment to conduct extramarital affairs. And I don’t mean this in the sense that he owns the apartment; he will literally give his key to the apartment he lives in to his bosses and stand out in the freezing cold for an hour or two while he waits for them to finish having sex.
Showing very blatant and casual infidelity is definitely something that would not have flown under the Hays Code. Supposedly, Wilder got the idea for this movie shortly after watching Brief Encounter (1946) and was also inspired by a story about how a Hollywood agent once used a low-level employee’s apartment to sleep with a producer’s wife (said agent ended up getting shot by the wife’s husband as a result). Considering how adultery was something forbidden by the Hays Code, this script collected dust on the shelf for many years. It is the kind of thing that makes you wonder why this was blocked, though. The adultery being shown in The Apartment is clearly wrong and we’re invited to laugh at these characters for being scumbags. It’s not like the film celebrates adultery but I guess to Hays Code sensibilities, just the idea that sex might exist is too much for some to handle.
Looking back on Wilder’s filmography, I realize there was usually a sexual undertone in his films that only became more explicit in these last two. From the seductive femme fatale in Double Indemnity (1944) to the implied casting couch in Sunset Blvd. (1950), the withholding of sex seems to be a thing that drives many of his male protagonists. Given that Wilder was born in Europe, a continent whose attitudes towards sex have always remained much more liberal than America’s, it seems like he was always trying to see how much he could get away with in regards to the censors.
Anyway, this set-up is the hook to get the audience interested but this is about the extent of how zany The Apartment gets. Instead, the movie comes off as a very reserved and tragic dark comedy. The best word used to discuss The Apartment is “loneliness.” Most of the first act is spent showing Baxter’s desperately lonely life and the beautiful part is that it’s all in the settings and cinematography. At first seeing him stand out on the street corner as two other people make love in his apartment is kinda funny but the longer the moment sits, the more you see how sad it is. He’s out in the cold, alone while watching human intimacy be cheapened into such a banal matter in his own apartment. The fact that the movie takes place during Christmastime, a time for celebrating companionship with the ones you love, only further adds to the misery.
The Apartment is also quite ahead of its time in showing a character being a cog in the machine of a corporation, long before this is the standard fare for most protagonists in romantic-comedies. Another striking shot is showing Baxter working at a long master desk (this is before cubicles were invented) and how he blends into the crowd.
Anyway, Baxter starts to hit it off with one of the elevator operators in his office building, Fran (Shirley MacLaine). He gets up the courage to ask her out though that dream is quickly ruined when he finds out that one of his bosses, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), is asking her to be one of his mistresses that he takes to Baxter’s apartment. Eventually, Sheldrake leaves her with Baxter so Baxter can clean up his mess and the two start spending even more time around each other and slowly get to know each other.
What makes The Apartment stand out from most romantic-comedies, both back then and now, is that there is a real cynical edge to it. Looking back on it, I think one reason why Wilder’s movies are so easy to love is that they usually showcase characters where making ends meet is what drives them. All of his protagonists have real jobs that require them to carve out time to pursue goals or is the incentive for them to pursue their journey. As easy as it is for a movie to say that true love will conquer all, The Apartment shows the socioeconomic factors that would come into play in a situation like this. In most other romantic-comedies, the protagonists are usually quite wealthy, don’t seem to have any actual jobs or, if they do, they’re kinda just mentioned as some quick exposition. In the case of The Apartment, both Baxter and Fran seem hesitant to actually pursue their feelings because their livelihoods are on the line. If they stand up to their bosses, their careers could be ruined, they could be fired and all that seems like a foolish risk to take when you could just swallow your pride and self-respect.
Even ignoring these themes of loneliness and reflection of the in-hindsight psychopathic ways that people could be easily taken advantage of with the threat of termination, The Apartment is a very effective romance. The movie is about 2 hours and a full half-hour, a quarter of the running time, is dedicated to one long conversation of Baxter and Fran talking with each other as Baxter nurses her back to health after her disastrous date with Sheldrake. This scene is very effective at letting our characters get to know each other but also showing what a vivid contrast the two men are. Sheldrake is very outgoing and boorish and treats his girlfriends and wife horribly while Baxter is much more shy, cynical but a genuinely sweet guy once you get past his initial rough edges.
In case you’re thinking this actually sounds like a very clichéd set-up of archetypes for romantic-comedies, well, this is the movie where those come from. For most of the Golden Age of Hollywood, the gold standard for romantic-comedies was It Happened One Night (1934) and most archetypes in the screwballs seemed to stem from that. The man was usually hyper-charismatic and the woman would be a bit of a brat and one or both characters diabolically tricked the other into falling in love with them. The Apartment, along with Marty (1955), introduced the aspect of real personal and relationship issues that generally prevent people from letting another person in. From here, it would seem that the romantic-comedy genre split going into the second half of the 20th century. Rom-coms going forward would either stake their blame in whether the problems come from screwball situations or the protagonists having to conquer their own demons.
Billy Wilder was a director who was often called a cynic ahead of his time though the more accurate description I’ve heard is that he was an optimist whose hopes were constantly dashed by the world around him. Most of his movies tend to reflect this belief as they depict some of the absolute worst aspects of humanity but there’s always some sort of morality tale attached. Some Like It Hot and The Apartment stand out as probably the most upbeat of his films but while Some Like It Hot was a screwball with some edgy hints of transgenderism and violence, The Apartment is a delightfully cynical and funny movie about the human condition. The commentary on loneliness and corporate ruthlessness is both topical and timeless. I also think its message is also revolutionary in reacting the banality of casual sex, a phenomenon that would gain a lot of traction in 60s America (though the Free Love movement was still a few years away at this point).
In regards to watching it today, The Apartment still holds up for the most part and remains a classic in the genre. If you’re a fan of romantic-comedies and you’ve never seen this one before, put it on your watch list. It’s funny, has likable leads with great chemistry and it makes you feel happy when you get to the end.
But could it be called movie of the year though?
In case you missed it:
1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2
2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2
3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2
4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2
5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2
6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2
7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2
8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2
9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2
10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2
11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2
12th Academy Awards (1939): Gone With the Wind: Part 1, Part 2
13th Academy Awards (1940): Rebecca: Part 1, Part 2
14th Academy Awards (1941): How Green Was My Valley: Part 1, Part 2
15th Academy Awards (1942): Mrs. Miniver: Part 1, Part 2
16th Academy Awards (1943): Casablanca: Part 1, Part 2
17th Academy Awards (1944): Going My Way: Part 1, Part 2
18th Academy Awards (1945): The Lost Weekend: Part 1, Part 2
19th Academy Awards (1946): The Best Years of Our Lives: Part 1, Part 2
20th Academy Awards (1947): Gentleman's Agreement: Part 1, Part 2
21st Academy Awards (1948): Hamlet: Part 1, Part 2
22nd Academy Awards (1949): All The King's Men: Part 1, Part 2
23rd Academy Awards (1950): All About Eve: Part 1, Part 2
24th Academy Awards (1951): An American in Paris: Part 1, Part 2
25th Academy Awards (1952): The Greatest Show on Earth: Part 1, Part 2
26th Academy Awards (1953): From Here to Eternity: Part 1, Part 2
27th Academy Awards (1954): On the Waterfront: Part 1, Part 2
28th Academy Awards (1955): Marty: Part 1, Part 2
29th Academy Awards (1956): Around the World in 80 Days: Part 1, Part 2
30th Academy Awards (1957): The Bridge on the River Kwai: Part 1, Part 2
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