The Apartment 1960

[7.3/10] It’s strange how resonant certain elements of The Apartment remain sixty years later. C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is basically running the extra-marital affair equivalent of an Airbnb out of his apartment to otherwise makeup for his dead-end job. There’s classism at play here, with the older, established generation shaming or pushing around the younger generation while taking advantage of their work, that’s sadly still with us. And through the character of Fran Kubelik (Shirely MacLaine) there’s a cynicism and resignation about how the world works, leaving her snarky but despairing over the prospects that leaves the have-nots of the world with.

That’s lends itself to the major theme of the film: do you give into that system, going along to get along and taking what limited spoils it offers you, or do you become a mensch, a real human being, who cares about things beyond climbing the ladder and who cares about doing the right thing, with the right people.

It’s a compelling notion, best realized through the film’s two major characters. Shirley MacLaine makes an instant impression here as Fran, the elevator operator of the insurance company where all the main players work, who’s also the secret mistress of Mr. Sheldrake, the high-ranking executive who “books” Baxter’s apartment in the city for their clandestine rendezvous.

In a movie that comes with a certain broadness and even loopy sense of humor, there’s real pathos to Fran’s existence. It’s dispiriting to hear her speak in terms of those who take and those who get took as though it were an immutable law of the universe. It’s disheartening to hear the way she feels fated to love terrible people who’ll only mistreat her. She’s very funny under the strength of the dialogue writer/director Billy Wilder gives her, but there’s also an achingly human air of sadness that permeates the existence of someone who’s come to not only believe that she’ll never have anything better, but that she doesn’t deserve anything better.

Jack Lemmon brings all his everyman charm to C.C. Baxter, a character who should seem a loss worse than he is, but who’s buoyed by the inherent sense of decency that Lemmon confers on every character he plays. You get the sense of his sad sack existence being pushed around by his bosses while a promotion is dangled just out of reach, while he’s also groused at by landlords and neighbors, and even denied love because the people above him want it for themselves, even when they don’t really care about it.

He’s caught between those two extremes. He makes every possible allowance for his superiors, standing up to finger-wagging physicians and taking punches from disgruntled brothers-in-law and risking legal blame to protect a boss who’s using him and Fran at the same time. But at the same time, Baxter genuinely cares for Fran, even loves her, treating her with a level of kindness and appreciation that she’s denied by Sheldrake and his false promises.

There’s meat to those notions and the way they’re dramatized through the main trio’s interactions in the titular West Side apartment. But there’s also issues here that prevent The Apartment from realizing those ideas to their full potential here. For one thing, the film has tonal problems. You could creditably describe his movie as a class-conscious, romantically-minded, light suicide comedy. One minute Wilder and company focus on the poignant predicament of someone like Fran. The next, it’s making frantic jokes about neighbors thinking Baxter is a casanova. The comedy often undercuts the drama and vice versa, when sincere moments give way to zany gags and major plot elements being founded on the same.

The Apartment is also a long movie, not in the sense that it stretches beyond the two-hour mark, but that it takes its time for everything. That works when you’re spending time with Baxter and Fran together, since their relationship is the backbone of the film, and you need to see them developing a rapport and a connection for the film’s major turn to work. But it makes the movie exhausting when we get overextended sequences about various junior executives trying to use Baxter’s apartment, or repeated bits of neighbors shaming Baxter, or constant reminders of Sheldrake’s villainy.
That’s another part of the problem -- there’s no nuance to Sheldrake, the film’s antagonist. He’s a jerk, and there’s little depth to him beyond his self-centered odiousness. He just does one crappy thing after another, and lacks any character traits beyond his duplicitousness. There’s inherent commentary in the way that the seemingly upstanding family man and head of personnel who’s ostensibly responsible for keeping employees on the straight and narrow is, in actuality, a liar, a womanizer, and a user. But the character himself is one-dimensional.
In the end, Fran and Baxter overcome his obstacles. The two of them fall in love over the course of Baxter looking after Fran in the wake of her suicide attempt following the epihpany that she is just one in a long line of Sheldrake’s office mistresses. From that darkness comes light, as Baxter decides his juicy promotion isn’t worth being taken advantage of any longer, and following his example, Fran finds her own strength and initiative to leave Sheldrake behind.
But it’s a schmaltzy ending that doesn’t fully work for me. I’d initially thought the movie might end after Baxter’s efforts to declared his intentions regarding Fran to Sheldrake backfires when Sheldrake tells Baxter he’s finally leaving his wife for Fran (after his secretary forced the issue). Baxter gets the promotion he’s been angling for and Fran ends up as Sheldrake’s sole paramour anyway.
There’s a poingance in that moment. You get the sense that for a moment, Fran and Baxter glimpsed true freedom and an alternative to this rigged rat race, but are ultimately corrupted by the system, given the things they think they wanted, while coming so close to a something greater that nevertheless slips away. That would be a sad story, but also a grimly plausible one. And yet, for all its still-relevant exploration of classism, it may just be too much to ask for a 1960s film like The Apartment to line up with the likes of The Sopranos and The Wire on that front, even the movie seems to tease that outcome.
Even if Wilder wanted to end the film on a more positive note, it seems strange that Baxter’s departure comes after Sheldrake insists on still using the apartment, even after Baxter’s been made his hard-working assistant. He’s willing to tolerate Sheldrake continuing to date and underappreciate the woman he loves, but somehow continuing the “temporary love nest” arrangement is a bridge too far.
Maybe it’s just that it allows Baxter to see the futility of it. No matter how hard he works or how high he climbs, there’ll always be people like Sheldrake still lording their positions over him and taking advantage of him, so why keep up with that life? But it lacks the principle it would have shown had Baxter quit when Sheldrake essentially said, “you can give up the girl and get the promotion or lose your job and fight for her.” Instead, Baxter took the easier option, which makes his later sign of backbone over a property rights issue rather than the woman he loves feel less significant, and he and Fran’s ultimate reunion less cathartic.
But as much of The Apartment still, sadly, has relevance to life in 2020 with its themes of a culture of takers and bad actors masquerading as upstanding members of society, it may very well be presentism to ask more of a film made sixty years ago than what it offers us in its resolution. Despite the tonal whiplash, despite the overextended length, Fran and Baxter and their predicaments leap off the screen as much today as they did six decades ago. That alone is an accomplishment in art, while also an indictment of what’s changed and what hasn’t since the two last rang in the new year.