Thoughts from the committee
If we can trust one Hollywood titan to deliver a romantic comedy with a real edge, then it’s Billy Wilder. Hot on the heels of the success of Some Like It Hot (1959), the taboo-breaking, gender-bending classic, came The Apartment, with iconic turns from Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.
The premise is classic farce: CC ‘Bud’ Baxter (Lemmon) is a small cog in the corporate machine of the insurance agency where he works. To curry favour, he lends his apartment to company bosses for their affairs. The arrangement is made even more complicated when he falls for one of the women caught in this system (MacLaine). But what makes The Apartment stand above is the pathos and sadness blended in.
Wilder’s pedigree in film noir (Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard) and in comedy make him such an impressive figure of the Hollywood Golden Age, and there are elements of both in this production.
Winner of five Oscars and ranked the 54th greatest film of all time on the most recent Sight & Sound Critics poll, The Apartment quietly changed the rules of the Hollywood comedy, paving the way for the more morally complex films to come later in the decade as the revolution of the new Hollywood era came into being.
“You can take your choice of adjectives to describe The Apartment. […] Here’s a partial list: Ironic, satirical, funny, sentimental, bitter and sad.” – John L Scott, The Los Angeles Times