If you think the movies Office Space or Horrible Bosses are good, wait till you see The Apartment. Rewind back to the 1950s and you’ll see how The Apartment gives us the impression that working for a corporation was just as annoying and harsh as it is to work for one today. The Apartment is one of the best portraits of how frustrating and challenging it is to work for corporate America.
C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is just your average guy working for a New York City insurance company. Trying to advance in his company, he forces himself to kiss the butts of four managers by letting them use his apartment as if it was a hotel. In turn, C.C. Baxter has to unfortunately work late or stay out in the cold throughout the week waiting for his bosses to finish fooling around with their mistresses. Baxter is insulted and disgusted but he has to keep his mind set on his goal so that he can be promoted. Finally, he has the chance to be promoted, but the decision remains in the hands of the company director Mr. Sheldrake (played by Fred MacMurray). Baxter thinks that all his hard work of kissing up to the bosses paid off, but it turns out that Mr. Sheldrake also wants to use his apartment for naughtiness. Baxter again feels used, but in order to get the promotion that he’s worked so hard to get, he also allows the director to use his apartment for tomfoolery. During this whole time, Baxter flirts with the building’s elevator girl Fran Kubelik (played by Shirley MacLaine), but the joke is on Baxter again when he finds out that Mr. Sheldrake’s mistress is Fran. Wilder’s storytelling creates the perfect harmony of comedy and drama and, by the end of the film, you’ll realize that you have just watched one of the most moving romantic comedies ever made.
Even with mixed reviews at the time of release, The Apartment was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won five – including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Film Editing. The negative reviews were understandable because, as tame as the premise may sound now, the movie was controversial. The Apartment was one of the first films to address infidelity and sex so blatantly on screen. A person couldn’t just take a mistress to a hotel as one can do so easily now. Back in the 1950s, there were “coalition for moral order” detectives that would knock on the doors of hotels to make sure that no one in there was messing around with prostitutes. If one wanted to mess around with a prostitute or mistress without stressing over being caught or having one’s reputation be ruined, one had to find a friend’s apartment to borrow. Wilder developed the idea for this movie after watching David Lean’s Brief Encounter, in which the lovers in that movie would meet at a friend’s apartment. Wilder wanted to write a movie about the guy who would lend his apartment to couples that want to mess around.
Billy Wilder was one of the most talented Hollywood filmmakers during a thirty-year span from the 1940s until the late 1960s. He was a versatile director and writer that created hit after hit such as Sunset Blvd., Double Indemnity, Witness For the Prosecution, Ace in the Hole, Stalag 17, The Lost Weekend, Ninotchka, Sabrina, The Spirit of St. Louis, Some Like It Hot, and a ton more! He either directed classics or he was involved with writing the screenplays for classics. That’s quite an unbelievable accomplishment. The Apartment is considered to be one of the greatest comedies ever made, ranked in the top 100 American Film Institute list. Wilder can also take credit for making Jack Lemmon into a real star. Before starring in Wilder films, Lemmon was just known as a comic actor, playing second fiddle to bigger actors. He was known to just be an average, nice, funny guy, but not a leading man. Wilder knew how talented Lemmon was after he starred in Some Like It Hot and saw that Lemmon can be a dramatic actor and a leading man. It’s hard for a serious actor to be funny, but Wilder knew that Lemmon could be the rare actor that can be funny in a dramatic movie without throwing the whole movie off. Wilder even brought the first pairing of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau together in The Fortune Cookie (1966). Younger generations may associate Lemmon and Matthau as that old funny duo (such as in The Odd Couple or Grumpy Old Men), but for many years the duo that would bring magic to the screen were Wilder and Lemmon.
I just watched the DVD of The Apartment last year and this Blu-ray is a huge upgrade! The 1080p 2:35.1 video offers excellent contrast and amazing detail. There is practically no dirt or flaws in this picture. Only one scene shows a hair hanging down from the top of the video, but it lasts for about four seconds. The video is crisp with outstanding shadow detail and impressive rich blacks. The set production looks especially flattering with high definition shots of New York City side streets, a very detailed apartment bursting with personality, and beautiful office shots which seem to have inspired the creators of Mad Men. MGM has given us a very beautiful-looking Blu-ray.
The Apartment isn’t the type of film to demo home theaters since the English DTS-HD 5.1 is like a pimped-out mono soundtrack. But this audio is still very impressive – Billy Wilder’s witty dialogue comes out crisp and clear as possible without any distracting hissing sounds or any other noises that could be found on a movie from the early 1960s. Surrounds and subwoofer just offer a minimal ambience during music scenes. Overall, this Blu-ray provides an excellent reproduction of the original sound elements and I can’t imagine it sounding any better than it does. French and Spanish mono audio choices, and English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles are also included.
The three main extras – commentary, Magic Time, and Inside the Apartment – are very good with informative details about the making of The Apartment. If you listen and watch them, you’ll learn about everything there possibly is to learn about The Apartment, Billy Wilder, and Jack Lemmon.
– Commentary with Film Historian Bruce Block
– Magic Time – The Art of Jack Lemmon
– Inside the Apartment
– Movie Trailer
When you think of romantic comedies, you don’t think exciting and controversial – but this is what The Apartment is all about. Besides the controversy of the infidelity storyline, Fred MacMurray was known as a good guy – playing it nice and straight in Disney films. In The Apartment, he was cast as a sleazy, immoral bastard. Think of the casting of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. That’s Fred MacMurray in 1960. Shirley MacLaine also brought such a unique yet down-to-earth style of acting in this movie. She’s not only beautiful here, but she also successfully merges sexy and sad at the same time. If The Apartment was remade today, the movie would star Paul Rudd and Zooey Deschanel only that it wouldn’t be as memorable, because there has never been another writer/director as talented as Billy Wilder.
Billy Wilder is known for making quality movies, but it’s a shame that only a few of them have received the Blu-ray treatment (just USA Blu-rays of The Apartment and Some Like It Hot, the upcoming UK Blu-rays of Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend, and the upcoming German Blu-ray of Avanti!). Do yourself a favor and check out this masterpiece that has now been released on a very impressive Blu-ray!
