The Apartment

The Apartment (1960)
Director: Billy Wilder

This film was so close to being awesome and yet I didn't quite like the ending as much as I could have. What I don'’t like about this film is a gripe I have with many films. I hate how films are so insistent on giving us a happy ending regardless of how much reality has to be suspended. For the entire film the main character is taken advantage of, used, stood up and beaten down time and time again. And yet at the end of the movie, somehow his love interest sees the error of her ways and comes running back to him. I couldn't for a second make myself believe that. If this were real life, after she had drained every drop of anything good she could possibly get from him, she would come back and steal his kidney(s) and then run off with his boss to live unhappily for the rest of her life and in her old age sit and wonder why she was such an unhappy woman. That is what would happen if this were real life.

That being said, I did like this movie. A lot.

Jack Lemmon is a likeable character named Baxter; he loans his apartment out to people in his office so that they can pursue their romantic intentions away from the prying eyes of their wives. This of course leads to complications when he loans the apartment out to the director of his company Mr. Sheldrake (Fred McMurray) and his mistress (what Baxter does not realize is that Mr. Sheldrake's mistress is in fact his own love interest Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine)).

The characters in this film are very real. Miss Kubelik was a woman who has been taken advantage of many times before by Mr. Sheldrake, and yet she keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Mr. Sheldrake is a conniving man who cheats on his wife, has so many mistresses that he can't even keep them straight, and gives his lady friend a $100 bill for her Christmas present; yet he is the man who is the director of the company. And then there is Baxter who falls in love with a girl that stands him up and treats him, by all accounts, very poorly; yet he can't help but fall in love with her. These are all themes that rings as true today as I am sure they did back in 1960.

My Rating: 5 out of 5