MOVIE REVIEW: The Apartment (1960)

The romantic comedy - such a bland genre in this day and age that was only captured so effortlessly in a handful of movies that I could name off the top of my head. The Apartment, is perhaps one of those: A quirky screwball comedy that happens to have a love story. Billy Wilder was one of the luminaries of the genre at the time, and his Apartment happened to win the Academy Award for Best Picture the year it debuted. Needless to say, while dated as a film, it still holds up as a story.

Lemmon is a New York office worker who owns an apartment that he lends out to co-workers who use it to have their dalliances with mistresses. On one particular occasion, he falls for the mistress of his boss. He is now forced to choose between her and his career, with some stressing events to follow. The setup is nothing we haven't seen before, 50 years later, but at least Wilder doesn't treat his audience like idiots and gives his characters more fleshed out personalities to work with. A little dramatic weight is added here-and-there to keep things grounded in reality, but still manage to work some screwball comedy magic.

Where the film's few faults lie happen to be from the format of the story itself, sometimes the seemingly episodic nature of events can seem a little disjointed - a relic of how storytelling back then was done for films. It's something I still need to get used to, but perhaps I just expect too much realism from my film, these days. I still believe The Apartment holds up, though. I was surprised how many times Jack Lemmon's antics had me laughing, I'd recommend it just for his performance alone.

8/10

Peace,
- Jon