The Apartment

Year 4, Day 47 - 2/16/12 - Movie #1,047

BEFORE: This one's been on my list for a while, but I only got a good copy a couple of months ago.  This would probably have fit in with my big business/office politics chain, but I didn't have a copy then.  Linking from Marilyn Monroe, who was of course in "Some Like It Hot" with Jack Lemmon, and this film was also directed by Billy Wilder, and won Best Picture of 1960.  Always a big day around here when I cross another Oscar winner off the list.  See, I told you some real classics would be coming up if you stuck with me...

We went out tonight for our post-Valentine's Day dinner (we never go out on Feb. 14, that would be too bananas) and we went to Delmonico's downtown - a steakhouse that's been around since 1837.  A place that's (allegedly) the birthplace of oysters rockefeller, lobster newburg, eggs benedict, etc.  But I was struck by the sense of NYC history, imagining what sort of people have eaten there over the years - probably everyone from Boss Tweed to John Lindsay, Fiorello La Guardia and so on.  It's weird to imagine a place like a restaurant surviving decade after decade as the world around it continues to change...

The TCM roadtrip is still in Africa today, screening "King Solomon's Mines", "The Desert Rats" and "The Black Stallion" (seen it) before moving on to Russia for "Fiddler on the Roof" (seen it), "Doctor Zhivago" and "Mission to Moscow".  I'm going to pick up "Born Free" from the Africa trip, because I only have a vague memory of that film from my childhood, and take another pass on "Doctor Zhivago".  I really should watch it due to its reputation, but I just don't have the DVR space right now.  That film, along with "Gandhi" and "Gone With the Wind", is still in my long-term plans, but they just seem like a lot of effort.

THE PLOT: A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.

AFTER: I'm glad this film fit in here, because it's more about sexual politics than office politics - actually, the two are fairly intertwined.  But again I've got to project myself back into NYC history, to a time before the Gay 90's, the Equal Rights 80's,  the Swinging 70's, and most of the go-go 60's.  Before text-messaging, before AIDS, before Woodstock, before the g.d. Beatles even - I think Eisenhower was president, for Pete's sake.  So it's a look at a particular moment in history, and needs to be taken as such.

So, as with "Desk Set", I take another look at a snapshot of NY's past (complete with another look at a swinging, booze-soaked Christmas party).  And as with "The Seven Year Itch", the central character is a nebbish - a nice-enough guy who seems competent at his job, but clueless when it comes to the opposite sex.  (Yes, Tom Ewell's character was married, and Jack Lemmon's character here is single, but other than that, essentially they're the same)

C.C. Baxter (Lemmon, last seen in "My Fellow Americans") works for a large insurance company, and is caught up in a scheme where he lets the executives use his nearby apartment for trysts with their girlfriends (or hookers, or various loose women, who knows?) while he works late, or goes to the movies, or just sits on a bench in Central Park.  He receives vague promises from them that this will lead to a promotion, and it seems like no harm is being done, unless you count his short-term exposure to the elements, and the long-term damage to at least four marriages.

We assume Baxter is getting compensated, at least for the snacks and the liquor, and through his eventual promotion over others who have been at the company longer.  But what about his rent?  The costs of (ick) clean-up?  The damage to his reputation, since his neighbors assume he's got wild parties going on every night?  Why doesn't he turn this around on the executives and blackmail them for all they're worth?  Because he's too nice a fella, that's why - which we, the audience, realize, even if his stereotypically Jewish neighbors don't.

Things get more complicated when he gets the promotion - though the executives make it clear that they could toss him on the street with a moment's notice - and he considers getting a love-life of his own, by asking out the attractive but seemingly unavailable elevator operator.  Apparently businessmen in the late 1950's weren't comfortable pushing the buttons for their own floors, and needed a low-level staffer to do it for them, even after elevators became fully automatic.

Here's where coincidence raises its ugly head, though I won't divulge all the twists in the plot here.  And it's also where Baxter's house of cards starts to come crashing down, at great personal cost to all involved.

I have to point out that there are no winners here - men (with only one or two notable exceptions) are portrayed as sleazy horndogs, unsatisfied with the house in White Plains, the still-attractive wife and the two kids, chasing secretaries around the office and always, always having a little something on the side before catching the Metro-North.  Women are either the scorned wives, loose barflies or scheming secretaries, either way lacking in the self-esteem department - except for the lead female elevator operator, who's got a newstand-worth of issues, can't get herself over the unattainable, detached executive and fails to notice the nice, single guy right under her nose.  Eventually she recognizes the destructive pattern she tends to follow, but it's a long, hard road to self-awareness.

It's a well-constructed film, but at times overly melodramatic, and mostly bleak.  And it made me wonder how anybody got any work done back then, since everyone seems to be so focused on getting some action.  Since I wasn't around back in 1960, is this what things were really like?

Also starring Shirley MacLaine (last seen in "Being There"), Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston (last seen in "Popeye"), David White (who also played advertising exec Larry Tate on "Bewitched") and Edie Adams.

RATING: 7 out of 10 hands of gin rummy