The plot focuses on an ambitious insurance accountant (Jack Lemmon) eager to climb the ladder at his 31,000 employee company who finds a pretty shady way to do so. Apparently in the late 50's/early 60's male bachelors were few and far between, ones who have their own apartment by Central Park were an even more precious commodity. If you are a philandering member of upper-management, you exchange good words and positive performance evaluations for standing appointments to borrow said apartment as a love nest. This results in Jack Lemmon's character being promoted straight to the top in a short amount of time.
Other than the obvious dilemmas that can result from such an arrangement (What do you do to pass the time while your superiors are filling your apartment with stank? Aren't these girls going to come to your place looking for these guys?) there has to be a more serious conflict in order for there to be a movie plot- so this is the part where the up-and-coming executive falls in love with his boss' side-dish.
I would love to have seen how this film was received upon its' inital release, because the way sex is discussed in this movie is very frank, not frank for its time, just frank. The water-cooler talk at the office is all about the girls the men are bringing to the apartment, the neighbors hear what is going on all hours of the day and assume Jack Lemmon is constantly having a sexual battle-royal and one of the men from the office even suggests a four-way "party." "The Apartment" had the strange timing of being released after the overly-conservative 1950's but before the sex-with-strangers-in-the-mud late-60's, so it's hard for me to tell what the sexual attitudes of the time were, but I can't imagine there wasn't some degree of protest over this movie. Conversely though, there must have also been a considerable amount of mainstream tolerance, as it did win the Oscar for Best Picture that year.
As far as the major players go, I was pleasantly surprised for the most part. I have never seen Shirley MacLaine play anything besides a sassy grandma type character, so I was able to get some insight as to why she is actually Hollywood Royalty- I had previously assumed it was just because she had simply lived long enough, but her portrayal of the mistress of the Big Boss was unlike any I've ever seen. She brings an aspect of humanity and sympathy to what could have been just another "other woman" character. Fred MacMurray was NOTHING like the Fred MacMurray I remember from "My Three Sons," I was impressed at how well he was able to play a sleaze. Jack Lemmon is another story however, his overly expressive, self-aware comedic acting paved the way for the Matthew Perrys of the world, and that isn't a good thing.
One of the most thought-provoking things "The Apartment" is able to achieve is the level of shock or outrage certain people experience while watching it. My wife was absolutely mortified over how many of the men in the upper-ranks of this insurance company were cheating on their wives at some random employee's apartment- I wasn't really shocked. I have always had the attitude that to a certain extent, the trade off to corporate success was leaving your morals at the door. To ascend to the upper-ranks of business means to leave your good traits in the gutter. Maybe it's the anti-authoritarian in me, maybe it's just because of my own observances of how people in upper-managerial roles conduct themselves.
"When you're in love with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara" (Fran Kubelik, "The Apartment")
One last thing about "The Apartment" that may not appeal to everyone is the use of gallows-humor. I am drawn to the darker aspects of comedy, dead celebrity jokes have always gotten to me faster than knock-knock jokes. When Jack Lemmon's character's botched suicide attempt becomes a focus of multiple jokes, some may wince. When Shirley MacLaine suggests the doctors shoot her like they do a horse over a broken leg, I might have been the only one in the theater in 1960 laughing out loud. The darker aspects of life (or death as it were) that Billy Wilder injects into all the movies he directs especially benefit this movie, as Jack Lemmon's over-the-top-to-the-point-of-absurd comedy needs something to counter-balance it.
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