Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
The Apartment (1960)
Director: Billy Wilder
Movie review
From Time Out London
Re-teaming Jack Lemmon, scriptwriter Iz Diamond and director Billy Wilder the year after ‘Some Like it Hot’, this multi-Oscar-winning comedy is sharper in tone as it traces the compromises of a New York insurance drone who uses his brownstone apartment as promotional capital by pimping it out, as it were, for his married bosses’ illicit affairs.This quintessential New York movie – with its exquisite design by Alexander Trauner and shimmering black-and-white photography – presented something of a breakthrough in its presentation of the ‘sex-war’ in the age of ‘the organisation man’, with its sour and cynical view of the immoralism, self-deception, loneliness and cruelty involved in ‘romantic’ liaisons.
Directed by Wilder with a professional fluidity, attention to detail and emotional reticence that belie its inherent darkness and melodramatic core, it’s lifted considerably by the performances: the psychosomatic ticks and tropes of Lemmon as the poor ‘nebbish’ balanced by the pathos of Shirley MacLaine as the abused ‘lift girl’.
Author: Wally Hammond
Time Out London Issue 1977, July 10 -16, 2008
Cast & crew
Director: Billy Wilder
Producer: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, Edie Adams full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 125 mins
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now