The Apartment (Jack Lemmon)

(Amazon UK link)

An elderly friend was giving away her DVD collection, moving to online films. Despite being twenty years younger, we prefer physical DVDs or blu-rays, and were delighted to be offered as many of them as we wanted. We selected about twenty-five which looked interesting, and last night decided to watch ‘The Apartment’. 

We had no idea what this was about - I didn’t even read the blurb on the back - but knew it was black-and-white. I thought that might bother me, but it wasn’t a problem at all. However we were a tad surprised to find that the premise of this film is quite risqué - and I’d have thought would have been shocking in 1960 when the film was first shown. But it won several Oscars, so perhaps people were less prudish then. 

Jack Lemmon is the main character, a young executive known as CC Baxter, who works for a huge insurance company in New York. He’s quite ambitious, and has discovered a way of hastening his rise to the top. He has an apartment which he lends to senior colleagues who want to ‘entertain’ young women. They, in turn, write positive comments about him in the office, leading to rapid promotion.

Of course nothing is simple, and we see poor Baxter walking up and down on a chilly evening, after staying late at the office. The light is still on in his apartment, so he knows he can’t interrupt. And when someone wants to change a booked tryst - or when Baxter himself is sick, and needs to be at home - he has to make extensive phone calls adjusting everyone else’s schedules.

It’s somewhat ridiculous, of course, and the film is light-hearted and exaggerated. Yet there’s apparently more than a grain of truth in the premise of professional married men playing around. And it certainly seems possible that a young and ambitious man could get himself caught up in this kind of scheme, which rapidly snowballed out of hand, in the hope of rising beyond his colleagues.

Naturally there’s a love interest for Baxter, in the form of Fran Kubelik (a young Shirley MacLaine), who works as an elevator operator. He talks to her, and she appreciates his courtesy but when he eventually plucks up the courage to invite her out, she’s reluctant - we don’t learn why until later in the film. 

The acting of the 1950s and early 1960s looks overdone and exaggerated by today’s standards, and the only person we thought at all believable was Fran, who displays almost every possible emotion in a sympathetic and believable way. The office philanderers in their suits feel like people from a bygone era although perhaps they still exist. And CC Baxter is an odd mix of honest, kind and thoughtful, yet so seriously ambitious that he has no problem compromising his integrity.

Still, the pace is excellent, the script realistic (given the bizarre nature of the film) and we didn’t feel that the film was over-long despite it being a full two hours. The rating is PG but it’s not a film I would show to young children, or even young teens; quite apart from the rather sordid storyline, there’s a lot of talk about sexuality (even if mostly euphemistic), some minor - but disturbing - violence, and a couple of very tense scenes. 

On the whole we liked it, but I’d only recommend it if you like this era and style of film. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews