Director: Billy Wilder
Screenplay: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray
Country: United States
Running Time: 125 minutes
Year: 1960
I suppose it’s a given that when you invest in boutique releases of Hollywood classics, most of them will be pushing the needle up to ‘good’. Many are going to generate overused but probably relevant hyperbole; classic masterpieces, the best of the best. Fried gold, etc. But it can also be a fact that attitudes and social mores have changed since Hollywood’s Golden Era. The name of the dog in The Dambusters, for example.
Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (classic… check; masterpiece… check; etc) is special even amongst its finest peers. The story is rooted in misogyny, sadly taken for granted in 1960, but the deftly played and sly narrative condemns such attitudes. It’s pretty modern in that sense. It doesn’t even tell off-colour jokes with a wink, trying to play both sides. No, everything is treated honestly.
The trick is focusing the story through Jack Lemmon’s C.C. Baxter. Look up “hapless” and you should see a picture of Baxter, one of Hollywood’s most unlikely leading characters. Lemmon is superb. One of his best roles, even accounting for the other six he made with Wilder.
C.C. Bud Baxter (Lemmon) is a lowly Manhattan office drone with a lucrative sideline in renting out his apartment to adulterous company bosses and their mistresses. When Bud enters into a similar arrangement with the firm’s personnel director, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray, The Caine Mutiny), his career prospects begin to look up… and up. But when he discovers that Sheldrake’s mistress is Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine, Irma la Douce), the girl of his dreams, he finds himself forced to choose between his career and the woman he loves.
The Apartment screenplay should be considered a sacred text. It’s dialogue heavy, suiting Lemmon especially, not screwball, but full of wry gags nonetheless. Beware the one-liners distracting you from a story that might break your heart, however.
Shirley Maclaine is phenomenal. A mature and invested performance, her sparky, wounded but witty Miss Kubelik is so layered, you could watch The Apartment a dozen times and see something new. There’s a feeling of a switch from high-concept comedy to something tougher, and that switch relies heavily on Maclaine. The clues are there from her first scenes though.
What starts as one of the great romantic comedies, this film, like Maclaine, is so much more. Considering the subject and the era, in less shrewd hands than those of Wilder, it could have been very dated by now. And yet, even in 1960, it has something to say about mental health. Its subtle charms and its humanity continue to resonate.
Whereas a rom-com typically needs to bend around a fantasy (Notting Hill, for example), The Apartment solidifies into something rooted in reality. Wilder’s direction is in perfect sync with everything else, so the shift to melodrama results in one of the most rewarding endings you’re likely to see. Two souls find one another because of a ridiculous concept, not the other way around.
VIDEO
This is another fabulous release from Arrow, developing from their previous high-standard for this title. The UHD transfer is perfect. In 1960, as with Psycho, black and white was a choice. Wilder’s crisp white almost-Metropolis aesthetic for the office, the darker chintz of the bachelor pad, the smoky clubs and the wintery New York weather; all are rich and pin sharp. The details are wonderful, especially when you can read the titles on Baxter’s sparse bookshelf (they hint at an attention to detail in the narrative you’d be forgiven for taking for granted).
EXTRAS
This is a beautiful presentation of a fabulous film, possibly the last great film of the Golden Era, an outstanding example of how the studio system could work. The extra features are perfectly balanced, responding to a film that genuinely continues to work today. “Compassionate cynicism” is a quote that stands out, perfectly encapsulating this timeless story.
- 4K restoration from the original camera negative
- 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Original lossless mono audio
- Optional lossless 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio remix
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Audio commentary with film producer and historian Bruce Block
- The Key to the Apartment, an appreciation by film historian Philip Kemp
- Select scene commentary by Philip Kemp
- The Flawed Couple, a video essay by filmmaker David Cairns on the collaborations between Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon
- A Letter to Castro, an interview with actress Hope Holiday
- The Writer Speaks: Billy Wilder, an archival interview from the Writers Guild of America’s Oral Histories series
- Inside the Apartment, a half-hour making-of featurette from 2007 including interviews with Shirley MacLaine, executive producer Walter Mirisch, and others
- Magic Time: The Art of Jack Lemmon, an archive profile of the actor from 2007
- Theatrical trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ignatius Fitzpatrick
- Collector’s booklet featuring writing on the film by Neil Sinyard, Kat Ellinger, Travis Crawford and H.V. Hyche
