The Apartment
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| The Apartment | |
 original movie poster |
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| Directed by | Billy Wilder |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Billy Wilder |
| Written by | Billy Wilder I.A.L. Diamond |
| Starring | Jack Lemmon Shirley MacLaine Fred MacMurray |
| Music by | Adolph Deutsch |
| Cinematography | Joseph LaShelle |
| Editing by | Daniel Mandell |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | June 15,1960 (US) 20 July (UK) |
| Running time | 125 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,000,000 (est.) |
The Apartment is a 1960 American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. It was Wilder's follow up to the enormously popular Some Like It Hot and was an equal commercial and critical hit, grossing $25 million at the box office. The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards, and won five, including Best Picture.
It was later adapted by Neil Simon, Burt Bacharach and Hal David into the Broadway musical Promises, Promises.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
C. C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a lonely office drone for an insurance company in New York City. Four different company managers take turns commandeering Baxter's apartment, which is located on West 67th Street on the Upper West Side, for their various extramarital liaisons. Unhappy with the situation, but unwilling to challenge them directly, he juggles their conflicting demands while hoping to catch the eye of fetching elevator operator Miss Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). Meanwhile the neighbors in the apartment building, a medical doctor and his wife, assume Baxter is a "good time Charlie" who gets a different woman drunk every night. Baxter accepts their criticism rather than reveal the truth.
The four managers write glowing reports about Baxter — a little too glowing, so personnel director Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) suspects something illicit behind the praise. Mr. Sheldrake lets Baxter's promotion go unchallenged on condition that Baxter's apartment accept him as a fifth regular customer. Still delighted about his promotion, Baxter asks Miss Kubelik to a Broadway show. She agrees, then stands him up. Later, on Christmas Eve, Baxter is astounded to come home and find her in his bed, fully clothed, and overdosed on sleeping pills. Mr. Sheldrake had borrowed Baxter's apartment for the evening and evidently left Miss Kubelik there.
Baxter and his neighbour the doctor keep Miss Kubelik alive and safe without notifying the authorities. She explains that she had an affair with Mr. Sheldrake the previous summer, ended it when his wife returned from vacation, and caved in to his appeals and promises later in the fall. When Sheldrake offered her money instead of a Christmas present she realized the ugliness of the situation and tried to commit suicide. The act shows a startling side of her usually sunny personality. Baxter tries to comfort her with assurances of Sheldrake's concern, but she refuses to speak to him on the telephone.
Kubelik recuperates in Baxter's apartment for two days, long enough for her taxi driver brother-in-law to assume the worst of Baxter and come to blows. Sheldrake's catty secretary, one of his former mistresses, finally "educates" Mrs. Sheldrake about her husband's infidelities. Faced with divorce, Sheldrake moves into a room at his athletic club and continues to string Kubelik along while he enjoys his newfound bachelorhood. Baxter finally takes a stand when Sheldrake demands the apartment for New Year's Eve, which results in Baxter quitting the firm. Kubelik realizes that Baxter is the man who truly loves her, and she leaves Sheldrake on New Year's Eve to be with Baxter that evening and runs to him. They end as two misfits, both out of a job, playing a game of gin rummy. When Baxter declares his love for Kubelik, her reply is the now-famous final line of the movie: "Shut up and deal."
[edit] Production
Immediately following the success of Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond wished to make another film with Jack Lemmon.
The initial concept for the film came from the one-act play Brief Encounter by Noel Coward, in which the main character would use a friend's apartment to have an affair on his wife. Wilder and Diamond also based the film partially on a local scandal in which a high-powered agent having an affair was shot for sleeping with the woman's husband. During the affair, the agent would use a low-level employee's apartment for his trysts.[1]
[edit] Cast
- Jack Lemmon as C.C. "Bud" Baxter
- Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik
- Fred MacMurray as Jeff D. Sheldrake
- Ray Walston as Joe Dobisch
- Jack Kruschen as Dr. Dreyfuss
- David Lewis as Al Kirkeby
- Hope Holiday as Mrs. Margie MacDougall
- Joan Shawlee as Sylvia
- Naomi Stevens as Mrs. Mildred Dreyfuss
- Johnny Seven as Karl Matuschka
- Joyce Jameson as the blonde in the bar
- Willard Waterman as Mr. Vanderhoff
- David White as Mr. Eichelberger
- Edie Adams as Miss Olsen
[edit] Awards
[edit] Academy Awards
Wins[2]
- Best Picture — Billy Wilder
- Best Director — Billy Wilder
- Art Direction — Edward G. Boyle, and Alexandre Trauner
- Editing — Daniel Mandell
- Original Screenplay — Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond.
Nominations
- Best Actor — Jack Lemmon
- Best Actress — Shirley MacLaine
- Supporting Actor — Jack Kruschen
- Cinematography — Joseph LaShelle
- Sound — Gordon Sawyer
Although Jack Lemmon did not win, at the 2000 Awards, Kevin Spacey dedicated his Oscar for American Beauty to Lemmon's performance. According to the behind-the-scenes feature on the American Beauty DVD, the film's director, Sam Mendes, had watched The Apartment (among other classic American movies) as inspiration in preparation for shooting his film.
[edit] Other
The Apartment also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source and Lemmon and MacLaine both won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe each for their performances. The film appears at #93 on the influential American Film Institute list of Top 100 Films, as well as at #20 on their list of 100 Laughs and at #62 on their 100 Passions list. In 2007, the film rose on the AFI's Top 100 list to #80. In 1994, The Apartment was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Currently the film is ranked 55th on They Shoot Pictures Don't They's poll of the '1000 Greatest Films of All-Time', as voted by 1,604 critics, filmmakers, reviewers, scholars and other likely film types. In 2002, a poll of film directors done by Sight and Sound magazine listed it as the 14th greatest film of all time (tied with La Dolce Vita)[3]. In 2006, Premiere voted this film as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time". In a BBC interview Ricky Gervais said that The Apartment is his favorite romantic comedy.[4]
The Apartment was the last film shot entirely in black-and-white to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. 1993's Schindler's List was shot primarily in black-and-white, but contained color sequences. All other Best Picture winners since The Apartment are either entirely or primarily in color.
The plot of the movie was borrowed for one central story of the Hindi movie, Life In A... Metro.
[edit] American Film Institute recognition
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Apartment |
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Apartment |
- The Apartment at the Internet Movie Database
- The Apartment at Allmovie
- The Apartment at the TCM Movie Database
- The Apartment script at the Internet Movie Script Database
| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Ben-Hur |
Academy Award for Best Picture 1960 |
Succeeded by West Side Story |
| Preceded by Ben-Hur |
BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source 1961 |
Succeeded by Ballad of a Soldier tied with The Hustler |
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