Do you remember the first film you ever saw? I mean the first adult film. For me it was The Apartment (1960). Billy Wilder directed the film. People love Some Like It Hot (1959) or maybe Sunset Boulevard (1950), directed by Wilder. but The Apartment was his masterpiece. The film was not based on a glamorous star, like Marilyn Monroe, glittering brightly in Some Like It Hot. Nor did it depend on a clever, high drama concept like the demise of a silent film star, played by Gloria Swanson. To state the comparison of the three films in Goldilocks terms... if Some Like It Hot was too hot... and Sunset Boulevard was too cold... The Apartment was just right-- the perfect combination of comedy and tragedy. And it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1960.
Jack Lemmon, star of The Apartment, compared the skillful crafting of the film to a pearl necklace, where each scene alternated between laughter and tears, one pearl bead after another, a perfect blending of humor and pathos. The twin masks of theater, comedy and tragedy, get their equal share of the screen.
I saw the film in upstate New York, a little town called Phoenicia. My mother and aunt took me to the show. I recall the bright light of the entryway to the theater and the smell of popcorn. But this could be a phantom memory--for what movie theater foyer is not brightly lit and when don't you have popcorn. None and never.
Shirley MacLaine, the film's starlet, attempts suicide and I felt anxiety around this point in the film, though not fully aware of the implications. Jack Lemmon, as Ben Baxter in the film, made spaghetti for Shirley and used a tennis racket as a colander. The downtrodden Lemmon progressed slowly in his muted pursuit of Shirley and the spaghetti dinner was an early victory as our hero rose from the ashes of subjugation. Lemmon had been crushed by his boss Mr. Sheldrake, played against type by Fred MacMurray. I may have known Fred MacMurray as the cheerful dad on TV's My Three Sons but probably not yet. In a few years I would know him from this role and in the Disney film, The Absent-Minded Professor, another cheerful turn for MacMurray. But MacMurray, as Lemmon's evil boss, was anything but sympathetic. MacMurray made an excellent heel, but a nuanced heel-- and nuance fills the screen throughout the film.
I left the film in an exhilarated state, an 11 year old feeling very adult-- like a river had been crossed. My authority figures, mother Beatriz and cultured Aunt Carmen, had helped me with the first baby step to art and adulthood. And Aunt Carmen even had an apartment in New York City. Her apartment on the Upper West Side had an edifice exactly like the iconic NYC apartment window exterior, the image from the film.
And the film captures the zeitgeist of the era, the rise of corporate capitalism and the slavishness of the company man. Jack Lemmon as the ambitious, but meek, employee allows his supervisors, especially Mr. Sheldrake, to use his apartment for their trysts. Shirley MacLaine, as Fran Kubelik, the office building's elevator operator, falls for Mr. Sheldrake's entreaties. They meet in Baxter's apartment. Lemmon finally calls a halt to the arrangement. By film's end, Ben Baxter quits and Fran Kubelik realizes Baxter truly loves her. They find the courage to reject Sheldrake. The couple shares a joyous, triumphant closing moment with a popping champagne bottle.
The optimistic final scene marks the close of a great film achievement and for me served as a signal for the beginning of adolescence-- art meeting life in the most powerful of ways.
The Apartment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apartment
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