Don't Make A Scene: The Apartment

The Story: 2009 was a rotten year—the chaser to a crappy decade. Too many people lost jobs, lost pets, lost friends and family, lost love. We need a drink in the worst way.

And the worst way would be alone in a smoke-filled bar on Christmas Eve with no place else to go.

"The Apartment" is a different kind of Holiday film—almost an anti-Holiday film, for there's not a Hallmark moment that the philandering executives who have control over "Bud" Baxter's upward mobility (and the key to his apartment) can't corrupt. They give lip-service to the Sanctity of Marriage and Family, and the rest of the anatomy to their mistresses. For "Bud," turning a blind eye to the hypocrisy was an opportunity for advancement. But now, he sees the cost to the woman he's befriended and saved from a suicide attempt, Miss Kubelik, and he doesn't like what he sees now that his eyes have been opened.

So, he's drinking himself blind at the local bar.

This scene is great on so many levels. It's one of Billy Wilder's "time-capsule" moments where for an instant, a timely reference is made to "date" the film—the rest is evergreen, working in any era. I love the one-shot aspect of it, too; the two bar-flies aren't even looking at each other, except as reflections in a presumed mirrored bar, and their conversation is a bit askance, as well. There's communication, but no connection—except in the dramatic pauses where a mutual drink is called for. Both players have little intricate moments of expression change that it almost has the feel of a Burns and Allen routine.

It's just another lovely slice of Humble Pie that's served up regularly to the part-time resident of "The Apartment."

Here's how.

The Set-Up: Christmas Eve—a time for men to be with their wives and girl-friends.

And, hopefully, they'll never meet.

For fast-tracker C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), Christmas Eve means a bar is his home away from home. And his home is a love nest for the executives at the insurance company, where he is employed. Tonight his heart has been stabbed with a sprig of holly, as he's found that his boss, Mr. Scheldrake (Fred MacMurray) is using his apartment for a tryst with the gal that Baxter likes, elevator girl Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). It's Christmas Eve, and Baxter is hitting the nog with a bunch of other executives and bar-flies to the point where there's no elbow-room. And he's so in the bag that he wouldn't notice that the straw wrapper that's been shot his way was Cupid's Arrow. But it's another ship-wrecked sailor on the Sea of Love, Margie McDougall (Hope Holiday), and she and Bud pass in the Night Before Christmas.

Action!

Margie leaves her place, and carrying her handbag and her empty glass, comes up alongside Bud. Without a word, she reaches up and removes the wrapper from Bud's bowler.

MARGIE: You buy me a drink, I'll buy you some music. (sets the glass down)

MARGIE: Rum Collins.

Not waiting for an answer, she heads for the juke box.

Bud looks after her noncommittally, then turns to the bartender.

BUD: Rum Collins. (indicating martini glass) And another one of these little mothers.

At the juke box, Margie has dropped a coin in and made her selection. The music starts -- ADESTE FIDELIS. She rejoins Bud at the bar just as the bartender is putting down their drinks in front of them. Bud removes the new olive, adds it to the pattern on the counter in front of him. They both drink, staring straight ahead. For quite a while, there is complete silence between them.

MARGIE:(out of nowhere)You like Castro?

(a blank look from Bud)

MARGIE:I mean -- how do you feel about Castro?
BUD: What is Castro?

MARGIE: You know, that big-shot down in Cuba with the crazy beard.
BUD: What about him?

MARGIE: Because as far as I'm concerned, he's a no good fink. Two weeks ago I wrote him a letter -- never even answered me.
BUD: That so.
MARGIE: All I wanted him to do was let Mickey out for Christmas.
BUD: Who is Mickey?

MARGIE: My husband. He's in Havana -- in jail.
BUD: Oh. Mixed up in that revolution?
MARGIE: Mickey? He wouldn't do nothing like that. He's a jockey. They caught him doping a horse.

BUD: Well, you can't win 'em all.

They sit there silently for a moment, contemplating the injustices of the world.

MARGIE(to herself): 'Twas the night before Christmas/ And all through the house/ Not a creature was stirring --
Nothing --
No action --

Dullsville!

(drinks; to Bud)

MARGIE: You married?
BUD: No.
MARGIE: Family?
BUD: No.

MARGIE: A night like this, it sort of spooks you to walk into an empty apartment.

BUD: I said I had no family -- I didn't say I had an empty apartment.

They both drink.

"The Apartment"

Words by I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder

Pictures by Joseph LaShelle and Billy Wilder

"The Apartment" is available on DVD from MGM Home Video.

The complete scene starts at about 2:51 on the video.

The Apartment

"The Apartment" (Billy Wilder, 1960) I went to a party the other night and a friend upbraided me, saying "Irony is so passé!"

Gosh, I hope not. That'd mean I can't enjoy Billy Wilder films anymore.

Wilder came to Hollywood as a writer* and had great success with and "Ninotchka" "Ball of Fire" and graduated to directing with "The Major and the Minor" and "Double Indemnity." Talk about a valedictorian. With the start of his directing career, Wilder concentrated on dramas with a biting humor (winning a Best Director Oscar in the process**), but with the failure of "Ace in the Hole" in 1951 shifted his course slightly to make more comedies with dramatic overtones, the most acclaimed being "The Apartment," one of the many collaborations between Wilder and actor Jack Lemmon.***

"The Apartment" tells the story of C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Lemmon), working for a major insurance company as one of the many drones stranded behind desk and adding machine—the mammoth working pool set, a miracle of forced perspective looks like it covers several city blocks and feels like you should pack a lunch just to cross it. Crossing it is uppermost in Baxter's calculating skull. And to that end, he uses everything at his disposal, including lending his apartment as a love-nest for the married executives to pursue...outside interests. That apartment should have a revolving door on it, as Baxter must keep a scheduler as well as a well-stocked liquor cabinet. The arrangement helps him get ahead and the personal recommendations brings him to the peaked attention of the company's personnel director Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray****) who has need of the Apartment himself.

Baxter is climbing the ladder now, but it's one of the elevator operators, Miss Francine Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) that gets a rise out of him. They start a flirty relationship that Kubelik is a little cool to pursue, seeing as she is on a downward spiral in a relationship with Sheldrake. For Baxter, it will become a case of clashing ambitions.

The situation drips with irony: an insurance company, where the exec's juggle statistics and mistresses with no moral compasses. And the hierarchy of executive structure is paralleled to the status of folks in their private lives: the mistresses are treated with contempt if they begin to interfere with the home turf. And Baxter is literally left out in the cold every night, as the executives hedonistically burn through relationships that Baxter doesn't have the roots to start. It's only when a crisis occurs that Baxter begins to grow a conscience over the moral compromises he's making and providing.

The crisis sparks something Baxter's superiors (in everything but morals) never slow down enough to experience—a caring relationship, centered around (ironically) Kubelik in Baxter's bed. Schedules get shuffled, promises broken, and complications loom that the usually organized Baxter can barely manage all in an effort to create a recuperating stillness in a hectic personal life that comes crashing into his business-life. Conscientiousness ensues.

It seems like a fairy-tale today with current rubber-board rooms of the business-world filled with sociopaths. But, at the tale end of the 50's and the concerns of the world moving away from our boys in khaki to the boys in grey-flannel, it was a cautionary tale. Revolutions of all sorts in the '60's and plagues, both sexual and financial, in the 70's have made the film seem...one shudders at the word... "quaint."

But, that doesn't affect its wit, its insight, its charm, or high entertainment quotient. As a film it's a perfectly built comedic construction, a bon-bon exquisitely made and wrapped, with just a hint of bitterness at its core. And in the running gag that permeates the conversation of the film, it delivers its bellyful of laughs with no disconnect to the head, on its way to the heart, intellectually-wise.

* Wilder liked to tell the story of escaping Nazi Germany, entering the United States through Mexico. When asked his occupation by the immigration official, Wilder tremulously answered, "I write movies." The Fed looked him up and down, then said "Write good ones" and stamped his papers.

** For the "The Lost Weekend," Ray Milland won the Oscar for Best Actor for that film.

*** Those being "Some Like It Hot" (1959), "The Apartment" (1960), "Irma la Douce" (1963), "The Fortune Cookie" (1966), "Avanti!" (1972), "The Front Page" (1974), "Buddy Buddy" (1981).

**** I had MacMurray's daughter for a client once, and I had to tell her, "Ya know, your dad could play terrific bastards!" She fairly sparkled, and thanked me.