Make no bones about it, The Apartment, Billy Wilder’s slice-of-life comedy about sex-and-life in 1960s’ Manhattan works as a seriously funny comedy (with dramatic undertones). It’s a tale about a loveable schnook, C. C. Baxter, played by Jack Lemmon (with aplomb), who works as a kind of drone in a large insurance office.
However, Baxter is on the rise, and a group of Esquire-Playboy types of senior executive men with their own offices see him as a key player in their extra-curricular office games with the ladies in the office: he has his own mid-town apartment. This is something that the Long Island commuters in the office don’t have. So if the boys in the office want to cheat on their wives, they connect with CC Baxter for the key to his apartment., on a time-share schedule. His reward is a set of vague promises for advancement.
Along the way, CC Baxter meets a cute elevator operator, Fran Kubiek, played by Shirley McClaine, and her falls for her. But there’s a ringer in the deck: Fran is the latest conquest of Sheldrake, the King Rat of the insurance company (played against type by Fred MacMurray). Sheldrake is a more serious player than the group of Playboy execs under him who also use Baxter’s apartment, because he’s willing to step over the line into sexual abuse.
In Billy Wilder – IAL Diamond’s clever script, there are three types of women in the main office in Baxter’s insurance company, and thee types of men. The women are posited as lovestruck fools, women who like to play, and sexual abuse victims. The men are good guys who want to fall in love, men who want to cheat on their wives with willing office girls, and sexual abusers.
Our main protagonists are Fran, who is the lovestruck fool, and CC Baxter, who is the good guy who wants to fall in love. The side gang of mid-level execs and their office women are the marriage cheaters and players. For modern audiences, the most interesting characters are Sheldrake’s secretary Miss Olsen (played by Edie Adams as a shell-shocked sexual abuse victim), and Sheldrake himself. The film makes it pretty clear that Sheldrake not only forced sex on his secretary, he rejected her afterwards, and kept her on staff (what was she going to do, report him, and lose her job?).
The plot spins out that Sheldrake is tired of Fran, and wants to turn her over for the next young thing, so he rejects her and dumps her in Baxter’s lap. but he does it such a calculated, creepy, uncaring way that he drives Fran to a suicide attempt.
At the end, Sheldrake tries to suborn Baxter into the upper realms of the insurance company, but Baxter rejects him and closes off his apartment from fun-and-games activities. He loses his job, but gains Fran in the end.
Kudos for Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond for at least providing an oblique look at a real-life kind of sexual predator in the unexposed 1960’s era, in The Apartment.
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