Film - The Apartment

A Story by cinlee dan

This is an essay on a Film, The Apartment.

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## The managers and directors, and their girls.

## How the story is plotted, especially how Baxter is in a predicament.

The Apartment
Directed by    Billy Wilder
Produced by    Billy Wilder
Screenplay by    Billy Wilder I.A.L. Diamond
Starring    Jack Lemmon Shirley MacLaine Fred MacMurray Jack Kruschen
Release dates    June 15, 1960
Running time    125 minutes
Country    United States
Language    English

Written and directed by Billy Wilder.
It begins with a monologue by the hero.
Monologue has an effect for audience to feel sincere with the person talking. The director seems to have chosen this monologue effect at the beginning to draw the audience straightforward. The scene is at a modern office, cold and business like, and not so warm‐hearted atmosphere. This is why the director chose to begin with this monologue.
The hero's name is Calvin Clifford, but called Bud Boy Baxter, usually called as Buddy Boy.
He lends his the key to his apartment to four managers for their affairs.
Audience can sense that the apartment not so posh by his explanation of “second-hand air conditioner” at the beginning of the film, even though the place is quite appealing. This technique is subtle and elegant.
Baxter succumbs to the promise of his promotion. But these four value him only by his convenience, not his business skills.
In short, he is the one who sees other's face and decide his next action.
Here he meets a personnel director who also wants to use his room.
He has been having an affair with Fran, whom Baxter fell in love with, and he happens to know their relationships.
Baxter asks her to go out for a musical, but she does not come. Fran was meeting Sheldrake, the personnel director, at a Chinese restaurant. This is the place they always meet and eat same dishes, listen to same music. That implies their relationship never changes.
At Christmas party, Sheldrake’s secretary reveals Fran that there were several girls dating with him, including herself. They used to go to the same Chinese restaurant and eat same dishes. Fran tried to believe his promise of divorce, but the evident shows that Fran would be as same as other girls, and she cannot accept it.
In the evening, Fran and Sheldrake are in a quarrel at Baxter’s apartment. She gives a Christmas present to him, but he leaves it and gives her 100 dollar bill, for her to buy whatever she wants, taking big presents to his kids.
She understands that she was merely a prostitute for him and overdoses herself.
Baxter is at a bar and picks up a woman who is married and she tells him about her husband. Both of them are drunk and he takes her to his apartment.
He finds Fran under unconsciousness and asks his neighbor, Dr.Dreyfuss, for a help. He believes Baxter always takes girls into his room. Baxter does not deny it, for not spreading bad rumor about Fran.
He helps Fran to recover, physically and mentally, trying to cheer her up by taking cards. Jack Lemmon’s humorous action is something to see, very light at the first sight but intricately built up in each second.
Fran’s absence confuses people around her, and her brother-in-law comes to Baxter’s apartment to get her back. He also misunderstands that Fran committed suicide because of Baxter, who does not deny anything. Seeing him, Fran understands now that Baxter has been protecting her.
Baxter gets promoted further in reward and Sheldrake tells him that he is going to divorce and be with Fran, because his secretary revealed his affairs to his wife. Baxter withdraws himself for Fran’s happiness, but Sheldrake asks his key to his apartment again, that means Sheldrake still repeats affairs again with Fran. He refuses it and leaves the company.
Fran runs to his apartment and hears a huge noise, which reminds her of his gun he was talking about, but it is a champagne. He lets her in and she finds out he is moving out. At the end of the film, they start playing cards.
There are many points should be raised.
Baxter seems “too light” and incompetence, but his name, Bud Boy Baxter gives the audience an unconscious feeling that he is not an idiot. In English language, the letter B is the most strong pronunciation. In a famous novel, Emma, this technique is also used to express her liveliness at the beginning of the story.
The most important part of this film is that how Baxter sees women.
The managers and the director are fond of women who are considered as “lower than men”, telephone operators, elevator girls, or secretaries, not the ones who work with men, opinionated as men, or as same position as men. There are various women in the company, there are more than 30,000 people working there, but the women having affairs with those five men are all “young and sweet girls”.
On the other hand, Baxter is a single. He chose Fran who is an elevator girl, and apparently he is promoted gradually because of his “cooperation”. However, he chooses a woman who is obviously not young and is married. It shows he is a liberal person in relationships of men and women.
In addition, he brings figures of “turnover of women by marriage” to show Sheldrake. It represents that Baxter is not the other men who still carry old notion of society but creates something new in new world.
This film was made in 1960 and feminism became complex after this, flowed with hippie culture in 1970’s and gender issues in 1990’s. Feminism was quite simple when this film was taken and easier to show the director’s opinion. This historical background is a key to the success of this story as well.
Talking about technical matters, his use of light is brilliant. Although the whole story is plotted close to situation comedy, the serious scenes are very quiet, using strong shining light reflected in the actors’ eyes. The audience can tell Sheldrake is a playboy, but can easily fall in love with him just like Fran, because of this shining-stars in his eyes.
Baxter’s hat is also used as a representation of his promotion. He leaves the hat onto the cleaner’s head when he runs out of the company. This is as a nice implication as broken mirror of Fran’s.
The director knew well about adults’ night-life.
He probably played cards a lot and knew that a card game can be a metaphor of “starting again”. This is why Baxter tries to play cards with Fran who refuses when she cannot forget love to Sheldrake, but the film ends with the scene of playing cards.
How the actors using properties at the bar also shows the director’s affinity towards night-life. These little aspects stand out the whole story smart and sophisticated.
This film is comedy, but audience can definitely learn important message from Billy Wilder.