Classic Movie Review: Billy Wilder's The Apartment

Billy Wilder made a great career out of handling delicate subject matter in surprisingly frank ways. From murder for profit and marital infidelity in Double Indemnity (1944) to sexual politics in Some Like It Hot (1959). In his last great film, The Apartment (1960), he deftly crosses the serious subjects often present in his previous directorial efforts (most, if not all, of which he also wrote) such as infidelity, sexual politics, attempted suicide with a light-hearted and well-intentioned touch. This film, which pushes its 2 hour running time along at a brisk pace, brought Wilder his second directing Oscar, his third for screenplay and his first as a credited producer of a Best Picture winner (his The Lost Weekend won Best Picture, but Wilder did not win a statuette).

Jack Lemmon earned his third Oscar nomination as C.C. Baxter, a low-level accountant in a firm that boasts a city’s worth of employees in one building (so many that the start and finish times of the workday are staggered by floor so as not to overrun the elevators). He is a pushover for several executives to whom he lends the key to his Upper East Side bachelor pad so they can engage in their extra-marital flings. He enjoys a carefree lifestyle and the eventual benefits of being in the good graces of company execs until he witnesses firsthand the damage that can be inflicted on the young women who are led to believe (however naively) that these men might leave their wives.


The status quo is disrupted when Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), the personnel director catches wind of the goings-on in Baxter’s apartment. He’s perfectly happy with the arrangement, so long as he is the only one permitted entrance for secret trysts. Baxter is promised a swift promotion in exchange for his word Sheldrake will have exclusive use of the apartment. Sheldrake even sweetens the deal with a couple of theater tickets. Baxter, being smitten with Fran Kubelik (magnificent Shirley MacLaine),the elevator girl, invites her out only to learn she’s already got a date. It turns out Miss Kubelik is Sheldrake’s other woman.

It’s somewhat surprising the way the film doesn’t tiptoe around the sensitive subject of extra-marital sexual relations. To be sure, it’s quite tame by modern standards, but for 1960 this movie demonstrates real courage to depict very real situations with raw honesty. But its triumph is that Wilder never allows his screenplay to push too far into serious melodrama. No, not even after Baxter finds Ms. Kubelik near death from an overdose of sleeping pills in his apartment, where Sheldrake has left her with $100 cash for a Christmas present.

At the same time Wilder doesn’t shy away from tough situations. The film is very much a comment on the treatment of women in the workplace. It’s remarkably forward-thinking for its time, which was before the existence of any kind of laws protecting women. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the start of a codification of sexual harassment law. Miss Kubelik is a willing participant in the love affair and there is no indication that the sex she has with Sheldrake is a condition of her employment or that anything untoward is occurring in the office. The crucial scene takes place between Sheldrake and his secretary, Miss Olsen. They, too, once had an affair and now that she sees what’s happening to Miss Kubelik she opts to rat him out to his wife, after which he fires her. Through the prism of today’s standards her dismissal is an outrage. “You should sue him for harassment!” you want to shout at the screen until you realize that in 1960 a woman in her position had no recourse. Such was the drawback of living in a man’s world.

Among The Apartment’s 10 Oscar nominations was one for its art direction. Here is a great example of how set design can impact the telling of a story. We see Baxter’s office with its huge expanse of anonymous workers at identical desks with the incessant blare of fluorescent lights overhead. In this world Baxter is 1 out of some 30,000 employees. The office is cold and unsparing, but at home we get a sense of Baxter’s individualism. The apartment has character with a sofa several feet from his television and a tennis racket in the kitchen for straining spaghetti. Baxter brings that individualism to the workplace by allowing certain executives entrance for their affairs. That attention extricates him from the anonymity of the job to the executive level.

Another word on Baxter’s home: He lives on the Upper East Side, a traditionally Jewish neighborhood of Manhattan. The other residents in his building – the landlady Mrs. Liebermann and the married couple next door, Dr. and Mrs. Dreyfuss – are obviously Jewish not only from their names, speaking intonation and frequent use of Yiddish words peppering their language, but also from their stark contrast with the WASPs of Baxter’s world. Wilder presents the Jewish neighbors as morally righteous, looking on disapprovingly at what appears to them to be a Gentile bringing home different women nearly every night. They urge him to find a nice girl and settle down. One of Wilder’s most important contributions to the film is when Dr. Dreyfuss, in opposition to the stereotype of the Jewish people, refuses payment for his services after the overdose: “I didn’t do it as a doctor. I did it as a neighbor.”

Try to imagine a simple movie like this, based on traditional values, winning major awards today. I can’t.