The Apartment [4K Ultra HD Blu-ray]

Director: Billy Wilder Billy Wilder

Overview

In this comedy, lonely insurance clerk Baxter allows his apartment to be used for the illicit affairs of five executive superiors. He is promoted, but he knows it is for maintaining silence about the affairs. When he falls for a pretty elevator operator, he wrestles with his conscious.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/15/2022
UPC:	0738329258047
Original Release:	1960
Rating:	NR
Source:	Kl Studio Classics
Language:	English
Time:	2:05:00
Format:	Blu-ray
Sales rank:	17

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jack Lemmon	C.C. Baxter
Shirley MacLaine	Fran Kubelik
Fred MacMurray	J.D. Sheldrake
Ray Walston	Mr. Dobisch
Jack Kruschen	Dr. Dreyfuss
Joan Shawlee	Sylvia
Edie Adams	Miss Olsen
Hope Holiday	Margie MacDougall
Johnny Seven	Karl Matuschka
Naomi Stevens	Mrs. Dreyfuss
Frances Lax	Mrs. Lieberman
Joyce Jameson	The Blonde
Willard Waterman	Mr. Vanderhof
David White	Mr. Eichelberger
Benny Burt	Bartender
Hal Smith	Santa Claus
Dorothy Abbott	Office Worker
Bill Baldwin	TV Movie Host
Paul Bradley	Office Worker
Eugene Jackson	Office Worker
William Meader	Executive
Steve Carruthers	Restaurant Patron
Lynn Cartwright	Elevator Supervisor with Clicker
Dick Cherney	Bar Patron
Franklyn Farnum	Office Worker
Herschel Graham	Restaurant Patron
Lars Hensen	Office Worker
Frances Weintraub	Mrs. Lieberman
David Macklin	Messenger
Fortune Cookie	Chinese Waiter
Mason Curry	Bit Part
Joe Palma	Office Maintenance Man
Paul Picerni	Patron in bar
David Lewis	Actor
Adolph Deutsch	Composer

Technical Credits

Billy Wilder

I.A.L. Diamond

Billy Wilder	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
I.A.L. Diamond	Screenwriter,Producer
Doane Harrison	Producer
Fred Lau	Sound Effects,Sound/Sound Designer
Harry Alphin	Sound Effects
Del Harris	Sound Effects
Milt Rice	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

Billy Wilder always liked to thread a strong streak of cynicism through his comedies, and he rarely made a film with a darker undertow than The Apartment. The effervescent comic charm of Jack Lemmon and quirky beauty of Shirley MacLaine give the film a palatable sweetness (while she would be given more glamorous treatment in later films, MacLaine was never more adorable than she was here), but they sugarcoat a very bitter pill in what is ultimately a story about moral accountability (and the lack thereof) in American business. While the film starts off as a naughty-for-its-time sex comedy about sad sack C.C. Baxter (Lemmon) who discovers he can curry the favor of his many bosses by letting them use his apartment for romantic indiscretions, it takes a more serious turn when we get to know Fran Kubelik (MacLaine), an elevator operator with precious little self-esteem. While most of the women Baxter's superiors lure to the tiny den of seduction look like brassy bar girls who've been this route before and know what they're doing, Kubelik is at heart a sweet (if disappointed) girl who desperately wants to be loved and who has made the mistake of falling for the duplicitous J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), whose callous indifference to the agony he inflicts falls just short of horrifying. (Anyone who grew up watching MacMurray on My Three Sons may be shocked to see how slimy he is in this role.) Ultimately, Baxter and Kubelik seem like two innocents stranded in a corrupt world, and what's most remarkable is not that they finally end up together, but that they both survive the experience intact and that Wilder is able to wring so many laughs out of a story that runs so close to tragedy. Mark Deming