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The Apartment

starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Abbott, Edie Adams
directed by: Billy Wilder

: The Apartment
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780792850083
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0792850084
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 19, 2001
Running Time: 125 minutes
Sales Rank: 5454
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: 1960



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Editorial Review:

Description:
Winner* of five 1960 Academy AwardsÂ(r), including Best Picture, The Apartment is legendary writer/director Billy Wilder at his scathing, satirical best, and one of 'the finest comedies Hollywood has turned out' (Newsweek). C.C. 'Bud' Baxter (Jack Lemmon) knows the way to success in business...it's through the door of his apartment! By providing a perfect hideaway for philandering bosses, the ambitious young employee reaps a series of undeserved promotions. But when Bud lends the key to big boss J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), he not only advances his career, but his own love life as well. For Sheldrake's mistress is the lovely Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), elevator girl and angel of Bud's dreams. Convinced that he is the only man for Fran, Bud must makethe most important executive decision of his career: lose the girl...or his job. *1960: Director, Story and Screenplay, Editing, Art Direction (B&W)

Amazon.com essential video:
Romance at its most anti-romantic--that is the Billy Wilder stamp of genius, and this Best Picture Academy Award winner from 1960 is no exception. Set in a decidedly unsavory world of corporate climbing and philandering, the great filmmaker's trenchant, witty satire-melodrama takes the office politics of a corporation and plays them out in the apartment of lonely clerk C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon). By lending out his digs to the higher-ups for nightly extramarital flings with their secretaries, Baxter has managed to ascend the business ladder faster than even he imagined. The story turns even uglier, though, when Baxter's crush on the building's melancholy elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine) runs up against her long-standing affair with the big boss (a superbly smarmy Fred MacMurray). The situation comes to a head when she tries to commit suicide in Baxter's apartment. Not the happiest or cleanest of scenarios, and one that earned the famously caustic and cynically humored Wilder his share of outraged responses, but looking at it now, it is a funny, startlingly clear-eyed vision of urban emptiness and is unfailingly understanding of the crazy decisions our hearts sometimes make. Lemmon and MacLaine are ideally matched, and while everyone cites Wilder's Some Like It Hot closing line 'Nobody's perfect' as his best, MacLaine's no-nonsense final words--'Shut up and deal'--are every bit as memorable. Wilder won three Oscars for The Apartment, for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay (cowritten with longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond). --Robert Abele



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Love's for Rent, Desire's for Hire, in Wilder Satire
To avoid redundancy, I will not provide a comprehensive analysis of The Apartment (Collector's Edition). ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Liberal 1950s New York Mores + Suicide
This movie provides great sociological insight into 1950s liberal New York's sexual mores. It also features ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - WHAT COULD BE WILDER?
THE APARTMENT was a wonderful satirical harpooning of the corporate world in the sixties ( when I first saw it ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Ah, insurance companies....
Very, very good and a bit sad. And most frighteningly there is a scene early on in the movie that shows show Jack ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - One of my top ten films of all time...
I have seen many great films during my days on this planet, by many great directors, writers, and/or producers. And ... Read More

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Copyright ©2003, Mark Carey.