The Apartment (Collector's Edition)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Benny Burt, Dorothy Abbott, Edie Adams, Hope Holiday, Joyce JamesonBrand: TCFHE/MGM
Cinematographer: Joseph La Shelle
Composer: Adolph Deutsch
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Black & White, Collector's Edition, Dubbed, Subtitled
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 125 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-02-05
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of The Apartment (Collector's Edition)
Movie Review: Jack Lemmon's best work.
Summary: 5 Stars
The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
When the subject of the greatest director in American history comes up, the usual suspects come out of their holes with the usual assertions. When you look at thousand-best-movie lists and narrow them down to movies made in America, the same two names pop up over and over again: Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen. While Hitch, obviously, was British, most of his films were made in America, and so I hope I can be forgiven for calling him American when it comes to his movies. As with Hitch, then, obviously, with the German director Billy Wilder. Wilder, despite having made some of the best-loved films in American history, always seems to get overlooked when this debate comes up. I have no idea why; pretty much everything that the man did is a classic. I have yet to see the Wilder film that isn't brilliant, and The Apartment is no exception.
C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a hack at an insurance agency, a bachelor who works long hours simply because he has nothing better to do. One evening, he allows a work colleague to use his apartment for a tryst with a woman who is not his wife. Word gets out, and soon Baxter's apartment is the place of choice for colleagues in the same situation. Things get a bit complicated when his boss (Fred MacMurray) finds out about the arrangement and starts using the apartment as well. Meanwhile, Baxter has struck up a friendship with attractive elevator girl Fran (Shirley MacLaine), and he hopes to take it farther. Then he finds out that his boss' girlfriend is none other than Fran. How many more ways can his job be in jeopardy?
It's a nasty topic, and in 1960 it was positively scandalous. Wilder offsets the outrage of the thing by turning the material into a comedy, and a very funny one it is. When, of course, it's not playing your heartstrings. Baxter, as the film begins, is a truly pathetic individual, and Wilder and his longtime collaborator, screenwriter IAL Diamond, initially play this for all the comedic value they can. But as Baxter runs into conflict after conflict, basically forcing him to grow a spine, his character's pathos is played more and more seriously. After all, such a tenuous situation is bound to induce some serious incidents. When they occur, they never feel forced, and more impressively they never feel out of place. Everything here grows organically out of what's come before. Nothing is too convenient or too precious; it all hangs together perfectly.
And then there is the acting. Wilder was a genius at taking the A-list actors of his day and managing to coax them into giving performances that were just that little bit better than they'd ever managed to come up with before. MacLaine was still, relatively, the new kid on the block, and no one really knew what to expect from her, especially when put up against such heavyweights as Lemmon and MacMurray (both of whom had teamed successfully with Wilder in the past, Lemmon the year before in Some Like it Hot and MacMurray, of course, in Double Indemnity). To say she held her own would be quite the understatement; she was nominated for Best Actress, losing to Elizabeth Taylor. (The movie did take home five Oscars, including Best Picture of 1960; it was nominated for ten.) As well, aside from the three leads was a wealth of talent in the supporting roles, including Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, and Edie Adams, among others, all of whom turn in performances as impressive as one would expect in a Billy Wilder movie.
As with every Billy Wilder movie I've seen (save The Lost Weekend), I simply can't say enough good things about this movie. Want a romantic comedy with real bite? Skip whatever's playing at your local cinemaplex and rent The Apartment instead. It is a superlative example of the genre, arguably the best romantic comedy ever made in America. **** ?
Summary of The Apartment (Collector's Edition)
Winner* of five 1960 Academy Awards?(r), including Best Picture, The Apartment is legendary writer/director Billy Wilder at his scathing, satirical best, and one of "the finest comedies Hollywood has turned out" (Newsweek). C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) knows the way to success in business...it's through the door of his apartment! By providing a perfect hideaway for philandering bosses, the ambitious young employee reaps a series of undeserved promotions. But when Bud lends the key to big boss J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), he not only advances his career, but his own love life as well. For Sheldrake's mistress is the lovely Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), elevator girl and angel of Bud's dreams. Convinced that he is the only man for Fran, Bud must makethe most important executive decision of his career: lose the girl...or his job. *1960: Director, Story and Screenplay, Editing, Art Direction (B&W)Romance at its most anti-romantic--that is the Billy Wilder stamp of genius, and this Best Picture Academy Award winner from 1960 is no exception. Set in a decidedly unsavory world of corporate climbing and philandering, the great filmmaker's trenchant, witty satire-melodrama takes the office politics of a corporation and plays them out in the apartment of lonely clerk C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon). By lending out his digs to the higher-ups for nightly extramarital flings with their secretaries, Baxter has managed to ascend the business ladder faster than even he imagined. The story turns even uglier, though, when Baxter's crush on the building's melancholy elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine) runs up against her long-standing affair with the big boss (a superbly smarmy Fred MacMurray). The situation comes to a head when she tries to commit suicide in Baxter's apartment. Not the happiest or cleanest of scenarios, and one that earned the famously caustic and cynically humored Wilder his share of outraged responses, but looking at it now, it is a funny, startlingly clear-eyed vision of urban emptiness and is unfailingly understanding of the crazy decisions our hearts sometimes make. Lemmon and MacLaine are ideally matched, and while everyone cites Wilder's Some Like It Hot closing line "Nobody's perfect" as his best, MacLaine's no-nonsense final words--"Shut up and deal"--are every bit as memorable. Wilder won three Oscars for The Apartment, for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay (cowritten with longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond). --Robert Abele
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