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The Apartment (1960)

Director: Billy Wilder

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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 2008-07-09 12:18:08

Time Out London Issue 1977, July 10 -16, 2008

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The Apartment

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

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