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Thursday, January 20, 2011

The Apartment


The Apartment is a 1960 American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack LemmonShirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. It was Wilder's follow-up to the enormously popular Some Like It Hot and, like its predecessor, was a commercial and critical hit, grossing $25 million at the box office. The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and won five, including Best Picture.
It was later adapted as a Broadway musical, "Promises, Promises," with a book by Neil Simon, music by Burt Bacharach and lyrics by Hal David.

Plot

C. C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a lonely office drone for an insurance company in New York City. In order to climb the corporate ladder, Baxter allows four company managers to use his Upper West Side apartment for their various extramarital liaisons. Unhappy with the situation, but unwilling to challenge the managers, Baxter juggles their conflicting demands, while hoping to catch the eye of fetching elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). Meanwhile Baxter's neighbors assume he is a "good time Charlie" who brings home a different drunken woman every night. Baxter accepts their criticism rather than reveal the truth.
The four managers write glowing reports about Baxter — so glowing that personnel director Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) suspects something illicit behind the praise. Sheldrake lets Baxter's promotion go unchallenged on the condition that he be allowed to use the apartment as well, starting that night. Sheldrake gives Baxter two tickets to the Broadway musical The Music Man to ensure his absence. Delighted about his promotion, Baxter asks Miss Kubelik to meet him at the theatre. She agrees; however, she is in reality Sheldrake's mistress. Though she intends to break off the affair that night, she is instead charmed by Sheldrake to Baxter's apartment. Baxter is disappointed at being stood up, but is willing to forgive Miss Kubelik.
Jack Lemmon as C.C. Baxter and Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik
At a Christmas Eve office party, Baxter discovers the relationship between Sheldrake and Miss Kubelik, though he conceals this realization. For her part, Miss Kubelik learns from Sheldrake's secretary that she is merely the latest female employee to be his mistress, the secretary herself having filled that role several years earlier. At the apartment, Miss Kubelik confronts Sheldrake with this information, and while he maintains that he genuinely loves her, he leaves to return to his family. Meanwhile, a depressed Baxter picks up a woman in a local bar and, upon returning to the apartment, is shocked to find Miss Kubelik in his bed, fully clothed and overdosed on Baxter's sleeping pills.
Baxter sends his bar pickup home and enlists the help of his neighbour, a physician, in reviving Miss Kubelik without notifying the authorities. The doctor makes various assumptions about Miss Kubelik and Baxter, which Baxter concedes without revealing Sheldrake's involvement. Baxter later telephones Sheldrake and informs him of the situation; while Sheldrake professes gratitude for Baxter's quiet handling of the matter, he avoids any further involvement. Miss Kubelik recuperates in Baxter's apartment under his care for two days, during which he tries to entertain and distract her from any further suicidal thoughts, talking her into playing numerous hands of gin rummy, though she is largely uninterested.
Baxter and Miss Kubelik's absence from work is noted and commented on, with Baxter's former "customers" assuming that Baxter and Miss Kubelik were having an affair. Miss Kubelik's taxi-driver brother-in-law comes looking for her and two of the customers cheerfully direct him to Baxter's apartment, partly out of spite, since he has been denying them access since his arrangement with Sheldrake. The brother-in-law also assumes the worst of Baxter and punches him several times.
Sheldrake, angered at his secretary for sharing the truth with Miss Kubelik, fires her. She retaliates by telling his wife about his infidelities, leading to the breakup of the marriage. Sheldrake moves into a room at his athletic club and continues to string Miss Kubelik along while he enjoys his newfound bachelorhood. Baxter finally takes a stand when Sheldrake demands the apartment for another liaison with Miss Kubelik on New Year's Eve, which results in Baxter quitting the firm. When Miss Kubelik hears of this from Sheldrake, she realizes that Baxter is the man who truly loves her and runs to his apartment. Baxter, in the midst of packing to move out, is bewildered by her appearance and her insistence on resuming their earlier game of gin rummy. When he declares his love for her, her reply is the now-famous final line of the film: "Shut up and deal".

[edit]Cast

[edit]Production

Immediately following the success of Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond wished to make another film with Jack Lemmon. Wilder had originally planned to cast Paul Douglas as Jeff Sheldrake; however, after he died unexpectedly, Fred MacMurray was cast.
The initial concept for the film came from Brief Encounter by Noel Coward, in which the main character used a friend's apartment to meet with a married woman. However, due to the Hays Production Code, Wilder was unable to make a film about adultery in the 1940s. Wilder and Diamond also based the film partially on a Hollywood scandal in which high-powered agent Jennings Lang was shot by producer Walter Wanger for having an affair with Wanger's wife, actress Joan Bennett. During the affair, Lang used a low-level employee's apartment.[1]Another element of the plot was based on the experience of one of Diamond's friends who returned home after breaking up with his girlfriend to find that she had committed suicide in his bed.
Although Wilder generally required his actors to adhere exactly to the script, he allowed Jack Lemmon to improvise in two scenes: in one scene he squirted a bottle of nose drops across the room and in another he sang while making a meal of spaghetti. In another scene where Lemmon was supposed to mime being punched, he failed to move correctly and was accidentally knocked down. Wilder chose to use the shot of the genuine punch in the film. He also caught a cold when one scene on a park bench was filmed in sub-zero weather.
Art director Alexandre Trauner used forced perspective to create the set of a large insurance company office. The set appeared to be a long room full of desks and workers; however, successively smaller people and desks were placed to the back of the room ending up with dwarfs. He designed the set of Baxter's apartment to appear smaller and shabbier than the spacious apartments that usually appeared in films of the day. He used items from thrift stores and even some of Wilder's own furniture for the set.[2]
The "Theme from the Apartment" was written by Charles Williams and was originally titled "Jealous Lover", which was first heard in the 1949 film The Romantic Age.[3][4][5]

[edit]Reception

At the time of release, the film was a critical and commercial success, making $25 million at the box office and receiving a range of positive reviews. The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther enjoyed the film, calling it, "A gleeful, tender, and even sentimental film." Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert and ReelViews film critic James Berardinelli both praised the film, giving it four stars out of four, with Ebert adding it to his "Great Movies" list. The film has a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 43 reviews.
However, there was some criticism. Due to its themes of infidelity and adultery, the film was controversial for its time. It initially received some negative reviews for its content. Film critic Hollis Alpert of the Saturday Review called it "a dirty fairy tale".[6] According to Fred MacMurray, after the film's release he was accosted by a strange woman in the street who berated him for making a "dirty filthy movie" and hit him with her purse.[2]

[edit]33rd Academy Awards (Oscars) – 1960

The Apartment received 10 Academy Award nominations and won 5 Academy Awards.[7]
AwardResultNominee
Best Motion PictureWonBilly Wilder
Best DirectorWonBilly Wilder
Best ActorNominatedJack Lemmon
Best ActressNominatedShirley MacLaine
Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the ScreenWonI. A. L. Diamond and Billy Wilder
Best Supporting ActorNominatedJack Kruschen
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Black and White)WonEdward G. Boyle and Alexandre Trauner
Best Cinematography (Black and White)NominatedJoseph LaShelle
Best Film EditingWonDaniel Mandell
Best SoundNominatedGordon E. Sawyer
Although Jack Lemmon did not win, at the 2000 Awards, Kevin Spacey dedicated his Oscar for American Beauty to Lemmon's performance. According to the behind-the-scenes feature on the American Beauty DVD, the film's director, Sam Mendes, had watched The Apartment(among other classic American films) as inspiration in preparation for shooting his film.

[edit]Other awards and honors

The Apartment also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source and Lemmon and MacLaine both won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe each for their performances. The film appears at #93 on the influential American Film Institute list of Top 100 Films, as well as at #20 on their list of 100 Laughs and at #62 on their 100 Passions list. In 2007, the film rose on the AFI's Top 100 list to #80. In 1994, The Apartment was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2002, a poll of film directors done by Sight and Sound magazine listed it as the 14th greatest film of all time (tied with La Dolce Vita).[8] In 2006, Premiere voted this film as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time".
The Apartment was the last film shot entirely in black-and-white to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (1993's Schindler's Listcontained some color sequences).

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