Welcome to the first Oscar Film Journal installment of 2025! For those just joining us, my goal over the next several years is to watch every Best Picture-nominated film ever. When I decided four years ago to undertake this.....undertaking, I'd already viewed 214 of the then 563 all-time nominees. As of this writing I'm up to 305 out of 600 (One film from the 2nd Oscars, The Patriot, is lost and therefore unavailable).
Today I'll be talking about the Best Pic winner for 1960, Billy Wilder's romantic dramedy, The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter (or "Bud" as his coworkers know him), a lowly desk jockey at a New York insurance firm who allows a handful of office managers to use his apartment for their extramarital affairs in exchange for glowing job reviews, in the hope of becoming an executive. This bizarre and rather grotesque arrangement begins to pay off with a promotion, but the catch is the company's top personnel director Jeff Sheldrake (MacMurray) wants in on the fun as well, in addition to his own copy of Baxter's key. Baxter develops a crush on Fran Kubelik (MacLaine), one of the building's elevator operators, unaware that Fran is having an affair with the married Sheldrake, who's been stringing her along for two years, promising he'll divorce his wife.
The film is surprisingly frank about both marital infidelity and sleazy corporate values, at a time when inappropriate favors in the office were not yet explicitly verboten. Baxter is so hyperfocused on climbing the office ladder he's willing to sacrifice his own health, such as when one of the managers schedules an "emergency" use of the apartment at eleven o'clock at night, sending Baxter out into the cold to wander the park. Fran is so stupidly in love with the big boss (and at least partially aware she'll never get from him the commitment she needs) she stands up a date with Baxter to unwittingly use his apartment with Sheldrake.
I went into this film thinking it was a light and fluffy comedy, but it gets pretty heavy at times - no surprise given the writing and direction by film noir master Billy Wilder - such as when a dejected Fran tries to overdose on sleeping pills after Sheldrake ditches her to spend Christmas with his family. These are two sad and lonely characters who know they're being taken advantage of and somehow don't think they deserve any better.
Speaking of Billy Wilder and noir, the black and white widescreen frame is used brilliantly throughout, from the sterility of Baxter's office pool with its rows and rows of desks stretching as far as the eye can see, to the cold gloom of New York's desolate winter streets and seedy bars, to Baxter's cramped apartment space and the constantly tainted bedroom we never actually see him get to sleep in. Wilder's New York City is nearly as bleak and oppressive as Norma Desmond's decaying mansion in Sunset Boulevard. There's no joy around here to be had for a poor sap like C.C. Baxter.
Like other Billy Wilder films, The Apartment gives us a flawed protagonist who allows himself to be used by people with less-than-wholesome motives, but while Walter Neff and Joe Gillis (from Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard, respectively) were pretty scummy themselves, C.C. Baxter is just a lonesome everyman so downtrodden in love he's fixated on swift career advancement instead. It's in caring for Fran and taking moral cues from his neighbor Dr. Dreyfuss that Baxter begins to rediscover what happiness is. Mr. Wilder's rather grim outlook on humanity must have softened a bit by 1960.
I give The Apartment ***1/2.
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