The Apartment

Spoilers!

I'm not so sure that 1960's THE APARTMENT is a love story.  Even by that final scene, when things maybe look hopeful for poor old Bud Baxter.  Is he any more capable of love than the lecherous managers at his office to whom he lends his Upper west Side flat for illicit affairs? He appears to be of at least average moral character otherwise, despite playing co-conspirator to multiple adulteries, all in the hopes of gaining a promotion at work, a huge insurance company with thousands of employees.  We root for his courtship of Fran, who operates the elevator because even though she can type fast, she can't spell.

As the plot unfurls, we'll learn quite a bit about Fran, beautifully played by Shirley MacLaine in one of her finest hours on film.   Director Billy Wilder, co-writing with frequent collaborator I.A.L. Diamond, has created such a perfectly realized character that you just want more and more of her.  To let her sit and just speak of her life, her disappointments.  They're familiar, but MacLaine always makes us feel we're listening to a genuine human being, not a screenwriter's wet dream.  Her Christmas Eve scenes with Bud (Jack Lemmon) are filled with anxiety and fear but also a certain unexplainable peace, like the building of something wonderful is in progress.  One must "go through hell to get to heaven", it's been said.  And what a bravura sequence.

But Fran has a history with personnel director Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray, convincingly loutish), who offers Bud a tempting promotion so he can use his pad.  Bud learns that history may be repeating.  Is he in love? If so, what can he do?

Bud's neighbors think he is a devil may care playboy, what with all the racket at his place every night.  You might hope for a scene where they learn the truth, that the ruckus is from the office pigs whose use of the apartment often leaves its tenant to wander city streets late into the evening.  Where Bud is finally vindicated.  But is he really so innocent? He longs, but can he really connect any better than the sad souls all around him?

These sort of wrinkles make THE APARTMENT a world class comedy drama.  A complex, adult motion picture that shows the Mad Men generation for what they are, and their women as generally resigned but also empowered after a time.  The film has several great lines (including the final one) and crafts humor as well as pathos.  I continue to be in awe of Wilder.  Lemmon, too, who is perfect in a slightly more cynical Everyman role, a "shnook" longing to be a "mensch".