Kerri Battles the AFI’s Top 100 — #80: The Apartment

The Apartment is categorized as a romantic comedy, a genre of which I’m notoriously judgemental. Still, I was excited to watch anything with a young Jack Lemmon and a young Shirley MacLaine. With Fred MacMurray following those names, I was pretty sure I was in for a goofy 60s rom-com with pratfalls and missed-by-moments-connections intended to leave me rolling in the aisles in stitches! I was woefully unprepared for anything I was about to watch.

The Apartment begins with a voiceover from C.C. “Buddy Boy” Baxter  (Lemmon) as he explains his job at an insurance company, his talent for remembering facts and figures, and the particular commodity he has that will really get him ahead — his cozy apartment that four philandering executives at his company find perfect for their not-so-secret trysts with not their wives. When he’s called up to Mr. Sheldrake’s office, the Head of Personnel, Baxter is certain his promotion is imminent. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Baxter can have his promotion all right — just so long as he leaves his key and his address on Sheldrake’s desk for that evening. Sheldrake even throws in two tickets to The Music Man to sweeten the deal. Baxter agrees and, ignoring any immoral aspects of the trade, asks the pretty elevator operator, Fran Kubelik (MacLaine) to join him at the theater. She tells him she already has a date with an old boyfriend, but she expects it to end quickly, so she agrees to meet him at the theater just before curtain. However, Fran’s date — **GASP** SHELDRAKE!!!  — has other ideas. In their usual back booth in a seedy Chinese restaurant, Sheldrake tells Fran that he intends to leave his wife, she believes him, and they head back to Baxter’s apartment to rekindle their romance. Because of course they do. As Fran and Sheldrake’s affair escalates, Baxter gets his promotion and a spine. At the company Christmas Eve drunken orgy party, he intends to ask Fran on another date. Instead, through a wacky turn of events involving Sheldrake’s nosy secretary/scorned ex-mistress and a broken compact mirror Fran left behind in the apartment, that plan basically gets shot to hell. Baxter winds up drunk at a bar while Fran cries to Sheldrake in his apartment over being just another in a long line of pieces on the side. Fran gives Sheldrake a personal and thoughtful Christmas gift. Sheldrake gives Fran a Benjamin and tells her to buy herself something nice because he’s got to get home to his wife and kids. Fran watches Sheldrake leave, then takes Baxter’s prescription for sleeping pills. All of it. Baxter stumbles home just in time to save Fran’s life, with the help of his neighbor, Dr. Dreyfuss. Sheldrake tells Baxter over the phone to keep it quiet. Upon doctor’s orders, Fran remains in Baxter’s apartment to recuperate, play cards, and fall in love. Upon his return to the office, Baxter plans to tell Sheldrake he’s prepared to take Fran off his hands because, well, he loves her. Unfortunately, Sheldrake is prepared to tell Baxter precisely the same thing. Since Secretary/Ex-Mistress told Mrs. Sheldrake the same things she told Fran, he’s been living at the athletic club.  But, of course, now that he sort of has to, Sheldrake is prepared to make it official with Fran. He just needs a new copy of Baxter’s key because, in light of Fran’s “accident,” he threw the last one out the window of the commuter train and he certainly can’t take her to the Y. Baxter calmly tells Sheldrake he can have a key — the key back to the executive wash room. Baxter quits on the spot, but not before telling Sheldrake he can’t take any women back to his apartment again, but especially not Fran. That evening, New Year’s Eve, as Sheldrake and Fran sit in their usual booth in the Chinese restaurant, he tells her of Baxter’s surprising resignation and the reasons why. As the lights dim for midnight, Fran realizes where she needs to be and runs to the apartment, where Baxter declares his love for her immediately. Fran smiles and tells him to shut up and deal a hand of Gin Rummy.

There may be quite a bit in the above paragraph that could be construed as cliche, but there’s a reason why that paragraph is so fucking long. The Apartment takes a well-worn premise that could easily come across as hackneyed and spins it into a subtly detailed yarn of gold. The above paragraph is just the stunted synopsis of what happens between Fran and Baxter and even every one of those details is important for just a basic understanding of the story because this isn’t just a simple boy-meets-girl light-hearted romp. There’s humor, of course, but there’s also a layer of grit and soot sprinkled on top that isn’t often a part of your average rom-com formula. Baxter and Fran’s destination is ultimately the same as, say, Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, but those generic couples always seem to take the well-traveled road . Nothing about Baxter and Fran’s journey is predictable.  And theirs isn’t the only love story The Apartment tells, either. You have Dr. and Mrs. Dreyfuss, who have no secrets, or Baxter’s landlady and her reluctant West Highland Terrier. You have My Favorite Martian and his fling with the Marilyn Wannabe. You have the drunken wife of a jockey jailed in Cuba for doping race horses with whom Baxter shares his wallowing. Most of the secondary characters in The Apartment offer the audience a glimpse into their own unique relationships and each is just as intriguing and well drawn as that of our main characters.

If I tried, I could find some mean, cheap shots to take at The Apartment. I could mock some characters as stereotypical or convenient. I could comment on the dated views of women and sex. I could do that, but I won’t because it would be forced and disingenuous. In hindsight, those points of view could be argued, but the film simply doesn’t read that way while watching it. Instead, the characters are enthralling, amusing, and accessible. For the first time in too long, I’m with the AFI on this one. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve done this before, but I actually strongly recommend The Apartment to everyone except ignorant assholes who poo-poo anything and everything black and white. Those people don’t deserve this joy anyway.  — KSmith