The Apartment Blu-ray

The Apartment
Blu-ray
Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray
Directed by Billy Wilder
Originally released 1960
Fox Home Entertainment 2012

Winner of the 1960 Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, and three others The Apartment reunites Billy Wilder and best actor nominee Jack Lemmon right after Some Like It Hot. Though packaged as a comedy, The Apartment is a dark drama with some comic moments. The Blu-ray features a short titled Magic Time: The Art of Jack Lemmon, and a rather interesting commentary track by Bruce Block.

Lemmon was a superb actor who played everyman like no one ever has or will and he does it superbly as office drone and schmuck C.C. Baxter. Baxter is popular with higher-ups in his company because he lends them the key to his apartment so they can have their affairs. When big boss Fred Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) learns of this arrangement, he takes advantage of it and Baxter too but delivers on the promise of a promotion. The problem is Sheldrake’s mistress Fran Kubelik (MacLaine), is the girl Baxter has a crush on.

The Apartment opens with Baxter’s arrangement as being comic. The movie becomes serious when he realizes he is contributing to the deception being perpetrated on MacLaine.

The Christmas scene where Baxter finds someone in his apartment is the best comic dramatic moment ever.

This movie belongs in any serious movie fan’s collection

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