Billy Wilder (1960)
Jack Lemmon is C C ‘Bud’ Baxter, a cog in a big New York insurance company. He makes his apartment available to his bosses to conduct their affairs; it helps with the rent and Bud’s promotion prospects. The Apartment has made its main points within the first 10 minutes so the question is how inventive will the acting, plot and dialogue be to sustain the film through the nearly two hours that remain. The answer is not enough, except for Shirley MacLaine – as Fran Kubelik, an elevator attendant in the insurance building and the current bit on the side of the company director Sheldrake. By the time of Sweet Charity, MacLaine had become nearly typecast as a kooky, golden-hearted tart/loser but, at this stage of her career (and even more than in the earlier Some Came Running), she’s fresh, vivid, focused, natural. Although there’s condescension in the conception of the role, there’s none in the actress’s embrace of it. Apart from his very first scenes (that is until he develops a ‘comical’ cold), it’s only in MacLaine’s company – and then only occasionally – that Jack Lemmon relaxes enough to stop performing: his comedic technique is formidable but he’s so busy and self-aware that he’s rarely funny. As Sheldrake, Fred MacMurray is laboured and toneless: it’s impossible to believe how Fran could be hopelessly in love with this dull man – dull to the extent that his inevitable comeuppance is weightless. Most of the other performances are so high-pitched that they’re quickly tiresome. The Apartment, written by Wilder and I A L Diamond, proceeds from an absurd premise – that the relative big shots in the company would be queuing up to make use of Bud’s poky apartment. Perhaps the absurdity is meant to be funny per se but it’s irritating – especially when Sheldrake gets in on the act – given that office hierarchy is an essential part of the dynamic. The film’s implication that advancement in the commercial world requires personal corruption was surely a tired moral proposition even in 1960. (The Apartment must have been pretty safe to have won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.)
28 August 2008
