Moods: The Apartment
Mood n. 1. A temporary state of mind or feeling.
2. The atmosphere or pervading tone of something.
Christmas is approaching. Nights seem longer than days now, the world becoming monochromatic. Freezing temperatures force us to migrate indoors, to turn to friends and family for warmth. Worn sofas and crackling fireplaces welcome some, but not all; for others, the cold compounds isolation, and loneliness festers while the world becomes festive.
Everything about The Apartment evokes this time of year. On the surface, the film’s cinematography, in calming black and white, beautifully depicts New York in that period between autumn and winter when nature’s colour desaturates. But any movie could be set in November or December. What truly attaches Billy Wilder’s 1960 film to this time of year is how it captures the mood of nostalgia, yearning, and compassion that seems universal as the year comes to a close.
C.C. Baxter, the film’s protagonist, may be described as a bachelor, but the sense of social and romantic freedom associated with this word doesn’t reflect his reality. Despite being merely a cog in the huge machine of the insurance company he works for, Baxter remains ambitious, perhaps too focused on his clerical life to be worried about his loneliness. Each night he is forced, through politeness and submission, to give up his apartment to multiple bosses for their extra-marital affairs, leaving him without the reliable comfort of a home or companion.
In today’s cinematic age of the anti-hero, audiences are rarely offered a character who is entirely redeemable, as ‘drama’ must be extracted from each and every discernible flaw in a protagonist. What makes The Apartment stand out is how it sees Jack Lemmon, the archetypal Hollywood everyman, portray Baxter as a man who, though down on his luck, maintains kindness and selflessness without exception. Lemmon embodies the Christmas spirit, his face at once able to convey the melancholy of winter and the hope of a new year on the horizon. His acting is accompanied by the languid saxophone score and monochromatic photography that create a New York of various tones of grey, existing within a pitch-black vignette.
It’s this delicate balance of the comic and melancholic that makes The Apartment endlessly compelling, defying cliches of romantic and comic cinema to create a realistic, touching story of love and uncertainty. Shirley MacLaine’s Fran Kubelik, an elevator attendant at the same insurance company, has a witty, sarcastic spark, yet seems emotionally conflicted as she, just like Baxter, is objectified by those in power. Perfectly cast and characterized, the chemistry of Baxter and Fran is clear from the first two-shot. Wilder eschews a stereotypical meet-cute to show the pair’s relationship subtly developing, despite the air of melancholy and corporate conflict that appears on the surface. His film is one that thaws, beginning with its wintry setting and becoming warmer as Baxter falls in love with Fran:
‘You know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were.’
Eventually, her melancholy appears to defrost too, but we are not offered an overtly sentimental ending. Instead, Wilder maintains the realism of any relationship — the uncertainty in conflict with adoration — up to the film’s conclusion. If you’re yet to see The Apartment, available on UK Netflix, now is the perfect time to catch it, before the sun returns and brings colour to the world.
