The Apartment
- Director: Billy Wilder
- United States, 1960
Wilder’s comedy about a clerk who lets his bosses use his apartment for trysts in exchange for career advancement has some unusually dark moments but on the whole it’s pretty safe.
It’s not especially difficult to see how this movie broke down barriers in 1960, tackling sexual harassment and gender equality with a refreshing viewpoint at the beginning of a decade in which much more would be done. In doing so, however, some of the requisite plausibility has gone out of the apartment window.
Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine work well together, bringing a special humanity to some horrific office sets that make me immensely grateful for my own workspace.
