One of the most commanding figures of Hollywood\u2019s early days, Wilder\u2019s filmography is, frankly, astonishing. During the 1950s alone, he directed four films that have since landed in the National Film Registry\u2014Sunset Boulevard<\/em>, Ace in the Hole<\/em>, Sabrina<\/em>, and Some Like It Hot<\/em>\u2014and others that are instantly recognizable for myriad reasons. (If you\u2019ve ever felt any thirst toward that iconic image of Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grate with the hem of her white dress blowing up around her, you can thank Wilder\u2019s The Seven Year Itch<\/em>.) It was undoubtedly those decades of experience that allowed for Wilder\u2019s easy confidence in helming The Apartment<\/em>, with its deliciously sharp script, pointed criticism of capitalist ambition, and blatantly wacky antics\u2014miscommunications, missed connections, and mistaken identities. And in Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, Wilder found performers adept and skilled enough to capture the contrasting vibrancy and melancholy their characters required. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Set in New York City, as many of Wilder\u2019s movies were, The Apartment<\/em> lets Lemmon\u2019s C. C. Baxter introduce himself through first-person narration. He works for Consolidated Life, one of the top five insurance companies in the city, and he prefers to go by \u201cBud,\u201d but most everyone at work calls him by the slightly condescending \u201cBuddy boy\u201d\u2014his coworkers on the 19th floor, where he sits at Desk No. 861, and the various executives for whom Bud provides an essential service. Nearly every night of the week, Bud hides the key to his 67th Street apartment under his welcome mat, leaves his building, and opens his home up to various Consolidated Life higher-ups for their philandering use. Random strangers they meet at bars. Secretaries and switchboard operators from work. And never, ever their wives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Does this complicity to such relentless infidelity bother Bud? It at least inconveniences him\u2014he sleeps on a park bench overnight, catching a wicked cold. His landlady is getting suspicious about all the comings and goings, and his neighbors, specifically his next-door neighbor Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen), are convinced that he\u2019s an immoral womanizer. Dr. Dreyfuss, who hears energetic noises through the walls nearly every night and sees Bud taking out bins of empty liquor bottles nearly every week, is brusque in his advice: \u201cSlow down, kid!\u201d And at work, it takes Bud a flurry of phone calls to rearrange the executives\u2019 nightly schedule when one of them demands an emergency date. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the bosses promise they\u2019ll repay Bud with a promotion, and to this oath at least, they\u2019re faithful. When one of the head honchos at Consolidated Life, Jeff D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), calls Bud into his office, it\u2019s to elevate him from the insurance agent pool to his new position as a second administrative assistant. From one of hundreds, Bud is now one of the few. And all Mr. Sheldrake wants in return, he tells Bud, is the key to his apartment. That won\u2019t be a problem, will it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wilder is relentless in his crafting of Consolidated Life as the sort of place that is blandly unremarkable on its face and corruptively hedonistic at its core; fans of Mad Men<\/em> will recognize the mid-century office culture. The replaceability of Consolidated Life workers and the objectification of its female employees is captured in MacLaine\u2019s Fran Kubelik, an elevator operator who greets Bud each morning with a smile and a flower in her lapel, and who is used to dodging men\u2019s hands on her ass\u2014but never Bud\u2019s. Instead, Bud comes alive in their interactions, Lemmon\u2019s endlessly elastic face splitting into a genuine smile, and we see in these moments how much he performs for the executives, how much he demeans himself for Mr. Sheldrake. He\u2019s heard the men who use his apartment call him a \u201cschnook\u201d and a \u201ckid,\u201d he\u2019s heard them threaten to fire him if he doesn\u2019t comply. There\u2019s no honor among thieves, and what are these men doing but using their status to steal space and time and dignity from someone who, knowing what their retribution will be, can\u2019t say no? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Toward Fran, though, Bud feels no such resentment. On his own, Bud is a whirlwind of nonchalance. In his untidy home, he throws a used match on the floor after he\u2019s done lighting his oven and tosses a magazine aside after he\u2019s done reading it; at work, he flings used facial tissues off his desk. He\u2019s a busy man, intent on climbing the corporate ladder begrudgingly offered to him in exchange for his discretion, but he can\u2019t hide his disdain for the very quid pro quo system that keeps him employed. On his couch, flipping through TV channels to watch while eating a frozen dinner, Lemmon\u2019s pliant mug transforms entirely from one of benign delight to unreserved irritation at the \u201cBut first, a word from our sponsor\u201d message that precludes the movie he wants to watch. When the program offers up another \u201cBut first, a word from our alternate sponsor\u201d immediately afterward, he turns the TV off in disgust. Bud is tired of waiting for his life to start, and he\u2019s increasingly tired of Consolidated Life, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How Bud and Fran\u2019s paths intertwine, and the way these two twentysomethings are held in thrall by the power and status of Mr. Sheldrake, takes The Apartment<\/em> on a journey that is intermittently quite dark but ultimately less cynical than Wilder\u2019s other work. There is sincerity throughout The Apartment<\/em>, provided mostly by Lemmon\u2019s fundamentally principled Bud and MacLaine\u2019s openhearted Fern, to balance a shocking-for-its-time subplot that tried to imagine how a desperate young woman might react when her married lover essentially calls her a prostitute after months of treating her like one. Notice that the romantic comedies that have followed in The Apartment<\/em>\u2019s footsteps haven\u2019t mimicked those exact subplots, the sorrow and resentment of which are legitimate for The Apartment<\/em> but have since been abandoned by the increasingly zany, lighthearted genre. What has been endlessly copied, though, is the wry despondency of MacLaine\u2019s performance. The deadpan way she mocks how others view her: \u201cThat\u2019s me, the happy idiot,\u201d she replies to her lover, who is frustrated that she\u2019s no longer \u201csuch a good sport, such fun to be with.\u201d The little laugh she uses to interrupt herself when she asks through tears, \u201cHow could I be so stupid? When you\u2019re in love with a married man, you shouldn\u2019t wear mascara!\u201d Unlike so many films of the time, The Apartment<\/em> focuses on Fran\u2019s pain in a way that is motivated by concern for her well-being, not an obsession with her downfall, and MacLaine was rightfully nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, alongside Lemmon for Best Actor and Kruschen for Best Supporting Actor. (Wilder collected three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay; overall, the film received 10 nominations and also won for Best Art Direction and Best Film Editing.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSome people take, and some people get took,\u201d Bud says, and The Apartment<\/em> never wavers in condemning the former and aligning itself with the latter. Its argument that love isn\u2019t a transaction, but a partnership, would help build the blueprint for the romantic comedy as it evolved. The heart of The Apartment<\/em> is in Bud straining spaghetti using a tennis racket, to Fran\u2019s delight, or in Fran\u2019s knowing smile when Bud professes his love exuberantly and repeatedly; those relationship dynamics play out time and time again in Annie Hall<\/em>, in Bridget Jones\u2019 Diary<\/em>, and in The Best Man<\/em>, as well as in teen-focused romantic comedies like Drumline<\/em> or 10 Things I Hate About You<\/em>. \u201cThe old payola won\u2019t work anymore,\u201d Bud says when he walks out of Consolidated Life for good, and the brilliance of The Apartment<\/em> was in how it built something new. The Apartment is streaming on Amazon Prime<\/a> and available for digital rental <\/a>through Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, and more.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Genre filmmaking is a precise art, and yes, that includes the much-maligned romantic comedy. 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