Austrian-American film
director Billy Wilder was already an accomplished cinematic master at the top
of his form in his native homeland well before emigrating to the United States
where his stature only grew exponentially.
Winning the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Screenplay for his
1945 film The Lost Weekend, Wilder
would go on to direct some of the most celebrated films from the Golden Age of
Hollywood yet maintained his signature auteur stamp distinguishing his work
from the rest of Tinseltown’s director-for-hire fare. Copping another Oscar for Best Screenplay in
1950 with Sunset Boulevard, arguably
the most savage look at the film business since All About Eve, Wilder’s status as a formidable filmmaking talent
continued to rise.
With the director eventually
serving up comedies both romantic and sardonic while, like Hitchcock, pushing
the boundaries of what production codes and censors would allow onscreen,
Wilder soon forged a working relationship with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon
with arguably the sex symbol’s most famous and commercially successful films: The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot. Regarded as two of the greatest comedies of
all time, Wilder seemed to be at the peak of his creative powers, presenting
rich character driven pieces that were both funny and often tragic while
displaying an acute visual sense with precise framing and placement of the
actors before the camera. Wilder, also
differentiating from the Hollywood norm, often chose to shoot his films in
black-and-white as opposed to the standard color film, cementing the director
as one who frequently took risks for the sake of the work.
To think the brilliant
auteur’s career could go any further seemed unthinkable, having already won
three Academy Awards within a five year span.
No one could have anticipated Mr. Wilder would make cinema history only
a year after Some Like It Hot became
a smash hit, for he was about to unveil what is regarded by many as the
pinnacle of his illustrious career: The
Apartment. Reuniting with actors
Jack Lemmon and Fred MacMurray and introducing Shirley MacLaine into his
creative circle, The Apartment tells
the poignant tale of insurance clerk C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Lemmon): a lonely,
single man who allows his superiors the use of his apartment for illicit
extramarital affairs in the hopes of gaining a promotion.
Having entered a routine of
being the last one to leave the office comprised of desks and overhead
fluorescent lights as far as the eye can see before being the last one to enter
his apartment after his bosses leave, Baxter finds a modicum of contentment in
his solitary existence of subservience, wearing all smiles in the face of
isolation. One day while at a sleazy
work party, Baxter meets Fran Kubelik (MacLaine), an elevator operator he grows
fond of with the hopes of one day pursuing a relationship with her. Unbeknownst to Baxter, Fran just so happens
to be having an affair with one of their bosses, personnel director Jeff D.
Sheldrake (MacMurray) in his very apartment!
Clearly the blueprint for
films like Brazil and American Beauty concerning a man tiring
of the white collar job institutionalized imprisonment while chronicling the
moment he decides to reclaim his soul, The
Apartment is a blistering critique of the power upper class bigwigs have
over their middle class employees buoyed by a sweet natured romantic comedy
concerning two lonely figures who find love in the most unlikely of
places. Emotionally the film takes
viewers on a dynamic journey through joy and devastation, defeat and triumph,
self-deceit and finally self-actualization.
Driven by heart while
director Wilder regards the proceedings with distant cynicism, The Apartment succeeds thanks in large
part to Lemmon’s heartfelt performance, depicting a man who has fallen into a
rut who must choose between selling his principles for success or clawing his
way out of the pit. MacLaine herself as
the depressed yet kind hearted Fran is splendid, imbuing her with sympathy and
tenderness, making her a woman trapped and bullied by a system devoid of a
moral compass. Even Fred MacMurray’s
evil and conniving Sheldrake, clearly the film’s villain, comes across not as a
prototypical Hollywood heavy but as a real heartless and manipulative manager
used to constantly getting his way.
Visually, The Apartment is meticulously designed
from the expansive war-room sized office to the claustrophobic and squalid
Upper West Side apartment, photographed in 2.35:1 widescreen with precision by
Joseph LaShelle. The widescreen format,
as opposed to the standard academy ratio of 1.33:1 fullscreen, was relatively
new at the time and Wilder’s use of space within the frame and the actor’s
proximity to the camera demonstrated the vast possibilities of the newly
developed film format. Some of the film’s
strongest moments are created entirely with purely visual cues, though Wilder’s
screenplay itself co-written by I.A.L. Diamond is incisive and witty with
carefully crafted exchanges of dialogue that speak volumes about the characters’
histories without saying too much.
Aiding the film’s overarching melancholic mood is Adolph Deutsch’s
somber score, with some of the more poignant episodes played entirely on the
grand piano.
Despite misgivings about the
film’s subject matter concerning an apartment used more or less as a brothel
for the tenant’s reptilian superiors’ transgressions, The Apartment became an instant critical and commercial hit. Nominated for a total of ten Academy Awards
and ultimately winning five including Best Picture, Best Director and Best
Screenplay, Billy Wilder made cinema history by becoming the very first
filmmaker to take home three top awards for the same film! The
Apartment also bore the distinction of being one of the last
black-and-white films to win the Best Picture award, decades before Schindler’s List and The Artist followed suit. The
Apartment also went on to win several Golden Globe awards and the coveted
BAFTA Award for Best Film.
In the years since, the film’s
reputation only grew as it was eventually inducted by the Library of Congress
into the National Film Registry for preservation as well as the American Film
Institute as one of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. To say this was undoubtedly the pinnacle of
the director’s career is an understatement.
Not unlike the Japanese master Akira Kurosawa, Billy Wilder eventually
found himself an outsider in the industry which made him a major film director. One of his films, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes from 1970, marked among the few
times final cut was taken away from the director and he ultimately retired from
the industry in 1981 after the failure of his final film Buddy Buddy.
Though in later years the
director’s output would slowly decline in productivity (and in quality for
some), The Apartment remains the
great director’s masterpiece, one which found the key to the human heart in a
white collar world bereft of one. Sweet
natured without being sentimental, provocative without being sleazy and wry
without being depressing, The Apartment
continues to endure as a timelessly poignant romantic comedy whose message
about the gulf between personal freedom and institutionalized slavery remains
as relevant today as it did when it first came out.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki