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Critics Consensus: Director Billy Wilder's customary cynicism is leavened here by tender humor, romance, and genuine pathos.
Critic Consensus: Director Billy Wilder's customary cynicism is leavened here by tender humor, romance, and genuine pathos.
All Critics (62) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (58) | Rotten (4) | DVD (10)
All this is quite a load for a comedy, but where else has social comment ever been so effective? Wilder hones his points to a piercing edge...
Production and direction wise, Wilder sustains his usual excellence. But his story is controversial and I am not one of those who can quite see The Apartment as the great comedy-drama he evidently intended it to be.
Wilder, a bilious and mercurial wit, here becomes a wide-screen master of time ...
Directed by Wilder with attention to detail and emotional reticence that belie its inherent darkness and melodramatic core, it's lifted considerably by the performances.
A comedy of men's-room humours and water-cooler politics that now and then among the belly laughs says something serious and sad about the struggle for success, about what it often does to a man, and about the horribly small world of big business.
Not to be missed on any account.
A screen gem that attained classic status in about as much time as it takes to comb one's hair.
Savoury Shirley' Maclaine and savoury Jack Lemmon save the day, two sad comedians who never spell Pathos with a capital and make a good pair, credible and touching, pleasing rather than glamorous,
If it weren't for Lemmon's so affable execution of Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's script, The Apartment could have been oppressively dark and cynical.
...despite all its cynicism, The Apartment still ends on a hopeful note...
From such potentially edgy material Wilder and co-writer IAL Diamond sculpt an unforgettable romance.
Despite some entertaining moments and a terrific performance by its lead, it's not a perfect film and does have some problems.
A deeply involving dramatic romance with great dialogue and three-dimensional characters (even if the plot is a bit predictable), and it is quite a curious thing that this film is labeled by many as a comedy when in fact it is so melancholy and rather heavy in tone.
Super Reviewer
Along with Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner, Billy Wilder's 1960 Oscar-sweeper The Apartment elevates the workplace romance into a sublime erotics of officious addresses (the omnipresent Mister and Miss) and economic conundrum. In this film, actuary C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) sleeps his way up the Consolidated Life ladder by proxy, as philandering execs use his 67th Street digs for scheduled romps. Meanwhile, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the elevator operator he chivalrously fancies, can't get personnel czar Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) out of her mind. The triangulation keeps its edges with on-your-toes dialogue and a fine-tuned critique of corporate culture. Lemmon navigates the line between simpering and sympathetic with nervous WASP-ish energy. Most indelibly, MacLaine gives us a gamine with the whole gamut of emotions, a cursed capacity to love, and a limit to her own self-pity. As in Shop, Christmastime and suicide mingle, and the name "Kubelik" has the old-world ring of Kralik, Matuschek, et al.; Baxter's Jewish neighbors put him on the road from schnook to mensch (perhaps this is Wilder responding to the critique that he wasn't Jewish enough?). And Billy again pulls of his trademark feat of finding pathos in taboo subjects. He had a sign in his office that read, "How Would Lubitsch Do It?" and here that director's elusive touch hovers over the proceedings, lending a lightness to even the most mercenary transactions. A classic in the truest sense of the word.
Lovely movie. Without knowing it from each other, C.C. and Fran are both jerked around by selfish and arrogant men. What I liked about it is that it doesn't turn into a sugary romantic movie, the characters stay true to themselves.
Looking solely at the premise, I find it really funny that a film about a lonely office drone who pimps out his apartment to his superiors as a way of getting ahead in the corporate world won the Oscar for best picture. In all seriousness though, this is a wonderful satirical dramedy that, like a lot of Billy Wilder's films, pushed forth a mature subject, and made no qualms about doing so. The film gets more serious as it goes on, but the first half is really pretty funny, and it's just a joy watching Jack Lemmon act all harried and whatnot. He gives a great performance, as do Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray, even though no one is the cast is bad. I rather like that, perhaps due to the time period, this film leaves much to the imagination- something that probably wouldn't happen if it were made now. Everyone, and not just the actors, are firing on all cylinders here
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