Back to Basics: THE APARTMENT

A few weeks back, The Answer came up with an idea for a collective blog. He invited any bloggers interested to start writing about the films listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Each moth we’d choose four of the films to watch, and everyone in the group would write about them. Kinda like a book club without the biscotti.

I love the idea except for one small thing – I won’t be writing full-on reviews of these films. I’ll express whatever thoughts they spark in my brain, and sum everything up by considering their place on this list…but I won’t really be assigning them a rating like I do my theatrical reviews. Sorry folks, but that’s the way the biscotti crumbles.

With all that in mind, expect to see me posting about the odd classic here and there beginning today with THE APARTMENT.

THE APARTMENT is a comedy, but I’m pressed to remember a comedy with more sadness built in. That sadness comes courtesy of two people coming to the slow realization of what they have let their lives become. On one hand is C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), an insurance grunt trying to get ahead. On the other hand we have Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), an elevator operator with a knack for picking the wrong guy. The sadness for both of them is the fact that they’re being used.

C.C. thinks nothing of letting executives use his apartment for their conjugal appointments. What’s the difference right? He gets in good with people who can help his career, and all it costs him is an hour or two outside on a New York night. The thing is, he isn’t really getting in all that good. Most of the executives can’t even bring themselves to call him Baxter – they only call him “Buddy Boy”. Sure he gets a promotion out of it all, but how good can he feel about something he had to whore himself out to get?

Even today, many people can’t climb the corporate ladder on merit. Many of us have to pass around the keys to our figurative apartment in the hopes that enough bosses call us “Buddy Boy” to get ahead.

Perhaps the only thing worse than playing the game, is believing you are actually above the game. Baxter does indeed think he’s an innocent part of his superiors’ philandering, until his doctor neighbour points out just how responsible he is. This alerts Baxter to the hardest part – looking in the mirror. Baxter would love to spend night after night at the bar, olives scattered like shell casings as he avoids the problem…but the truth, as the good doctor points out, is that he isn’t the pawn he pretends to be.

He may not chase skirts up and down stairs, but he doesn’t have any problem opening a door to steer the chase in the right direction.

Far sadder than Baxter offering up his home, is Fran offering up herself. By day she’s a firecracker; a woman who is six kinds of cute and has no earthly business pushing buttons in an elevator. But at night we get the truth about Fran. In her own words, she might be a girl in uniform…but that doesn’t mean she’s a girl scout.

Midway through the movie, as the chords to “Jealous Lover” fill a Chinese restaurant, Fran recites the lyrics to The Ballad of The Other Woman. She sits in front of a married man…a married man she truly wants. But as he starts into his promises, she surprises him – and us – by rhyming off the married man’s bible, chapter and verse. She’s made this mistake before, more than once it would seem. Enough times to know what’s coming, but not enough to step out of the way.

I’d like to say that Fran is one of a kind, but I’d wager we all have met someone like her in the world…the sort of woman who still hasn’t learned that “it’s a bad idea to wear mascara when you date a married man”.

As the film goes on, Fran continues to break our hearts. She is the sort of woman who could have any man she wants, and yet still finds herself as used and passed around as the key to Baxter’s apartment. Indeed, for a comedy, what we get are two of the most misled leading characters in movie history.

Interestingly, they are both characters with descendants. After you watch the film, grab yourself a copy of AMERICAN BEAUTY, and watch Kevin Spacey channel Lemmon’s s sublime physical expression. If that’s not enough, follow it up with a screening of ALMOST FAMOUS. If you do, you’ll see Kate Hudson’s performance as Penny Lane in a whole new light, especially her later intoxicated scene in the hotel suite with young William Miller. All of these films have a common thread – average people feeling like they don’t measure up and doing whatever they can to find the happiness they so dearly want.

If THE APARTMENT is to be believed, true happiness can be found by remaining true to yourself, and not taking the shortcut to happiness. Such shortcuts can lead to bad attachments, and as the movie so astutely asks, just how long does it take to get something you’re attached to out of your system?

But Ryan, Is it List-Worty?… You better believe it. This is one of the very best written movies of all time, and even in stunning black and white, it feels every bit as fresh today as it did fifty years ago. If you’ve never seen this film, get your hands on it.