#80 - The Apartment

Attempted suicide and extramarital trysts organized by an insurance agency grunt worker to move up the corporate ladder are not two elements popular in modern-day romantic comedies. But 1960's "The Apartment," starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in one of her first roles, takes a new approach to the formula and breaks a lot of ground on its way.

Lemmon is C.C. Baxter, an office worker for a high-rise insurance agency in New York City. MacLaine is Fran Kubelik, the sarcastic elevator attendant for the building which houses 31,259 employees (as Lemmon so astutely accounts). The two maintain a flirtatious relationship throughout the first part of the movie. Baxter has the odd tendency to loan out his apartment near Central Park to four members of the upper management team in his office. The men use his apartment to escape from their wives, bring their mistresses or dates to a place near the city, and enjoy themselves as consenting adults. Baxter doesn't mind as long as the arrangement is quid pro quo -- with each adjustment he has to make to his life, Baxter knows that it will all pay off the day he gets the big promotion.

And that day comes when a fifth member of upper management would like to use his apartment for dates, planning on taking his summer love interest, Fran Kubelik. Baxter, unbeknownst to the woman's identity, agrees and is given a big promotion. When he finds out it is Fran his boss is taking to his apartment, he makes a string of bad decisions. The boss dumps Fran and she ends up in Baxter's bed, overdosed on sleeping pills. Baxter becomes her caretaker and the two develop a more intimate relationship over the next two days.

Whew. That is a lot of plot to get through. Usually movies like this exhaust me. The whole "Well, he find out she was lying so he went and told his wife, and blah blah blah" routine can become tiresome and too gossipy after a short while. But this movie handles the many plot layers rather effortlessly. The jokes are quick, the situations complex and contemporary for a movie made before my parents were born.

One of the most groundbreaking aspects of "The Apartment" is its depiction of office life in a 1960s New York office. I think this is the first time we see people as robots in an office setting--clocking in, clocking out, boarding the elevator, standing up and leaving at exactly 5:20 p.m. They are all so drone-like, and I don't think it's anything anyone had seen before. With movies like "Office Space" and television shows like "The Office," it seems like America has satirized the typical office a little too much and has squeezed everything out of it. But "The Apartment" is clearly a front-runner for being the first to point out that office jobs are miserable in the funniest ways possible.