The National Gallery, Castellani House will screen director Billy Wilder’s Classic The Apartment for Classic Tuesdays next week. According to a press release from the National Gallery, The Apartment (1960) is one of a string of classic comedies by the great American director Wilder.
As so often with the Austrian-born Wilder, his script, here co-written with collaborator I.A.L. Diamond, is laced with sharp doses of the tough, often cynical realities of life, all the more enhanced when wrapped in the quick-fire witticisms and pacings of film dialogue.
The story revolves around hard-working insurance clerk C.C. Baxter, played at his wistful, bewildered best by Jack Lemmon who, in exchange for vague promises of promotion, lends his mid-town apartment to the supervisors in his large firm to use for trysts with their female subordinates. Basic decency seems to coexist in him with compliance at this morally reprehensible situation, but becomes inconvenient when he realizes that the lift attendant he has long admired, Fran Kubelik, (Shirley MacClaine, whose youthful good looks enhance a deft performance), is also being taken to his apartment by a senior supervisor. His moral ambivalence slowly shifts to rebellion as the distressed MacClaine, continually exploited by her lover, is driven to suicidal thoughts on Christmas Eve.
The story is livened and lightened throughout by the worldly-wise and extremely funny script, some of its best lines delivered by Baxter’s neighbours, Dr and Mrs Dreyfuss, who attribute the frequent and non-stop sounds from the apartment’s occupants to their young neighbour, whose depraved lifestyle they urge him to change.
The film won 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Art Direction/Set Design, in 1962, and 17 other wins. Wilder himself, director of several landmark Hollywood movies including Double Indemnity (1944) and Sunset Boulevard (1950), received a total of 20 Academy Award nominations in his long career, winning two for Best Director and three for Best Screenplay.
The Apartment will be shown at 6 pm on Tuesday at the National Gallery, Vlissengen Road. The film’s running time is 2 hours and 5 minutes and admission is free.
