Vintage 1960s Movies

The Apartment

 

          The Apartment was a 1960 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder from a screenplay he co-wrote with I. A. L. Diamond, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray.

          The story followed C. C. “Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon), an insurance clerk who, in the hope of climbing the corporate ladder, lets more senior coworkers use his Upper West Side apartment to conduct extramarital affairs. Bud is attracted to the elevator operator, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), who in turn is having an affair with Bud's immediate boss, Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray).

          The movie was distributed by United Artists to favorable reviews and commercial success, despite controversy owing to its subject matter. It was nominated for ten awards and won five, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Lemmon and MacLaine were Oscar-nominated and won Golden Globe Awards for their performances in the film.

          The Apartment has come to be regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, appearing in lists by the American Film Institute and Sight and Sound magazine, and being selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in theNational Film Registry.

 

An added note:

Art director Alexandre Trauner used forced perspective to create the set of a large insurance company office. The set appeared to be a very long room full of desks and workers; however, successively smaller people and desks were placed to the back of the room, ending up with children. He designed the set of Baxter's apartment to appear smaller and shabbier than the spacious apartments that usually appeared in films of the day. He used items from thrift stores and even some of Wilder's own furniture for the set.