The story begins with a single person who lives in a single apartment and is employed in a huge company that includes a large number of employees and aspires to upgrade quickly by renting his apartment to the senior employees to get their mistresses away from the eyes of the people but unless this person thinks that the future is hidden for him Surprise is not expected to carry him a lot of complications.
Directed by Wilder with attention to detail and emotional reticence that belie its inherent darkness and melodramatic core, it's lifted considerably by the performances.
When assessing his own work Billy Wilder described The Apartment as being the film with the fewest mistakes. And he is right: it is as near to perfect as is possible.
{VIDEO ESSAY} Billy Wilder's classic Manhattan-based romantic comedy comes with a sly critique regarding 50's era corporate culture of rampant misogyny and unbridled ambition.
Most of the time, it's up to director Wilder to sustain a two-hour-plus film on treatment alone, a feat he manages to accomplish more often than not, and sometimes the results are amazing.
A comedy of men's-room humours and water-cooler politics that now and then among the belly laughs says something serious and sad about the struggle for success, about what it often does to a man, and about the horribly small world of big business.
Production and direction wise, Wilder sustains his usual excellence. But his story is controversial and I am not one of those who can quite see The Apartment as the great comedy-drama he evidently intended it to be.
