20th Century Fox/MGM DVD Clearance Sale (series)

The Apartment

Starring: Jack Lemmon; Shirley MacLaine & Fred MacMurray Director: Billy Wilder

DVD Features:

Audio:

• Dolby Digital Mono - English, French, Spanish

Additional Release Material:

• Trailers - Original Theatrical Trailer

Major Awards:

Academy Awards - Best Art Direction - Set Decoration (b&w) (1960)

Academy Awards - Best Film Editing (1960)

Academy Awards - Best Picture (1960)

Academy Awards - Best Director (1960)

Academy Awards - Best Original Screenplay (1960)

Academy Awards - Best Original Screenplay (1960)

Product Description:

Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT blends his customary harsh cynicism with a humane streak that appears only fleetingly in his films. It stars Jack Lemmon as C.C. Baxter, an office clerk who curries favor with the executives in his office by giving them the key to his small apartment for the odd afternoon dalliance. Among them his is his callous boss, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who Baxter eventually learns is using his place to sleep with Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the sweet elevator operator the clerk has loved from afar. When Sheldrake coldly dumps the vulnerable young woman, she tries to commit suicide, but is saved by the intervention of Baxter. As the clerk lovingly nurses the young woman back to health he begins to realize, with the help of epigrammatic neighbor Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen), exactly how much of a fool he has been. Wilder brilliant depiction of the average American office as a place of brutality, coldness, and alienation conjure up Kafka and Marx. The director seduces the audience into what appears to be an unusually frank sex comedy, but turns the tables in displaying the consequences of the executive's cold indifference. Lemmon and MacLaine both give career performances and MacMurray is memorable as the blandly smiling snake.

Plot Keywords:

Classic | Comedy | Comedy (General) | Drama | Essential Cinema | Infidelity | Love Triangle | Recommended | Romance

Exerpts:

"Miss Kubelik, one doesn't get to be a second administrative assistant around here unless he's a pretty good judge of character, and as far as I'm concerned you're tops. I mean, decency-wise and otherwise-wise." -- C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) to Miss Kubelick (Shirley MacLaine)

"You know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe -- shipwrecked among eight million people. Then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were." -- Baxter to Kubelick

Production Notes:

• THE APARTMENT was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1994.
• The story was later turned into a Broadway musical entitled PROMISES, PROMISES.

Cast and Crew: