Billy Wilder is one of those writer/directors that is praised and praised and praised and I just cannot for the life of me understand why. I saw Sunset Boulevard (1950) which many consider his magnum opus and I thought it was okay. I didn't think it was as great as I was led to believe. But surely The Apartment (1960) would be different. It did win four academy awards. It does star Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Once again I've somehow missed why exactly he is considered such a genius.
The film introduces us to our hero, C.C. Baxter (Lemmon), who is stranded outside while one of his superiors at work uses his apartment for an extra marital affair. Baxter appears to do this alot, so much that his neighbors (who conveniently never see the cheating husbands) think he is quite the player. Baxter gets very little sleep and works a boring 9-5 job. But helping out these men is done on the promise that they will recommend him for a promotion in the company. On the way, Baxter shows his interest in the elevator operator girl Fran Kubelik (MacLaine). But it turns out she is having an affair with one of his bosses.
After a falling out with the man, she takes several sleeping pills and Baxter is the one who saves her and helps her recuperate. The film peters out with a fairly unconvincing love story between the two and ending with Baxter quitting due to his unwillingness to continue to have his apartment used. It has a pretty standard happy ending with nothing really surprising.
One major problem with this film is that it isn't funny. I'm not sure I laughed once in the entire film. It was actually quite agonizing as it plodded on. The death blow of this film is that I utterly did not care about the people in this film. I didn't like Baxter and I didn't care that he triumphed. In fact I rather disliked him. I didn't like Fran either. I thought her character was a fair idiot. Since I didn't care about the character I took no satisfaction in the outcome of the film. I just wanted the "the end" credit to come up.
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