Sometimes all it takes is a little research to learn that Netflix has some hidden gems you didn’t even know were hidden gems. The Apartment, a movie I had never heard of before I made this list, is not only a Best Picture winner or #99 on the IMDb Top 250, but is also #80 on the AFI 100 Films list. The triple threat! I maybe only have a handful of these films left.
None I promise. Okay! So Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon star in this comedy-drama about a man who lets his bosses use his apartment for their extramarital affairs in exchange for pulling him up the corporate ladder. But he falls for the elevator assistant and everything goes to shit!
Billy Wilder originally wanted to direct this film in the 1940s, around the time when he had directed Double Indemnity (and a few years before he directed Sunset Boulevard), but the production code at the time actually forbid adultery in films. We’ve come a long way! By the 1960s, Americans were seeing a lot more than the used to on film. By this I mean that in 1960, Psycho had finally shown the first toilet flush in American film history.
*Violins screeching*
So poor C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), must regularly vacate his apartment so that his superiors can screw the secretaries, phone operators, and elevator girls that work in this massive insurance company. I mean actually massive.
Fun fact: The wide shots of the office scenes were made to look bigger by using smaller and smaller desks and smaller and smaller people. The ones in the back (maybe not in this shot specifically) were actually children.
Anyway, so Baxter falls in love with Fran Kubelik, played by the amazing and beautiful Shirley McLaine. She’s often spouting sad one-liners about love.
Here she is today singing with Darren Criss on Glee.
She has an Oscar.
So when Mr. Baxter falls in love with Miss Kubelik (as they affectionately call each other?), Mr. Baxter’s arrangement with his employers becomes a problem. And crazy romantic comedy tropes come into play!
The film is comedic without ever being screwball, and dramatic without ever being disheartening. It balances nicely, and I think that’s what makes it rise above the comedies of its time. Shirley and Jack give real depth to these stock characters, the unattainable girl at work and the goofy man chasing after her. While exploring the bitterness of falling in love in addition to the harshness of the American corporate world, The Apartment feels like it’s actually trying to say something rather than just pull a laugh.
The film went on to win five Oscars, three of which went to Jack Lemmon (Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Original Screenplay). Only 10 people have ever won three Oscars in one year, including James Cameron, the Coen Brothers, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Peter Jackson, and Francis Ford Coppola. The ONLY person ever to win four Oscars in one year is Walt Disney. Oscar facts!
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