Movie Review: The Apartment

The Apartment: Torgo approves

This is a great movie. I actually rented it on VHS from the library. We didn't have a Netflix movie at home and I had to return a dvd I'd gotten the week before. I was there on Friday night, and the dvd section was mobbed, so I went to the video section, which was largely empty. It's not like VCR's stopped working when dvd's came out.

Anyway, great movie. Jack Lemmon is always terrific as the hopeless loser. Shirley MacLaine has what I think is an unusual role for a movie that's almost fifty years old, the psychologically distraught mistress of a higher-up in the company (it doesn't sound so unusual there, but I don't want to spoil plot points). And then there's Fred MacMurray, said higher-up, playing a complete jerk-off. He had an odd career. I know him mostly from "My Three Sons," but also from "Double Indemnity," which was terrific and, like his role in "The Apartment," completely unbecoming of a role model/widower/father of three boys with a tendency towards whimsical, quickly resolved adventures and dilemmas.

It still seems odd that a movie from 1960 is so openly about a guy who loans out his apartment to men having affairs so he can advance in his company. It's a very bitter movie. A comedy by name, but more of a very dark romance, as in, so dark it's just barely a romance when Wilder's more Capra-esque moments pop up. Lemmon helps it to be funny at points. He's just such a sad guy.