Even a lightweight romantic comedy like “Sabrina” (1954) holds up better than its 1990s remake, and the great Wilder pictures don't play as period pieces but look us straight in the eye. When Kubelik hears of this from Sheldrake, she realizes that Baxter is the man who truly loves her and abandons him, running to the apartment. Patted on the back and called “buddy boy” by the executives who use him, he dreams of a better job and an office of his own. One of the opening shots in the movie shows Baxter as one of a vast horde of wage slaves, working in a room where the desks line up in parallel rows almost to the vanishing point. The Apartment (1960) is producer/director Billy Wilder's bittersweet, heart-rending tragi-comedy/drama of a compliant insurance clerk (Lemmon) who secretly lends out his apartment to other company executives for adulterous sexual affairs and liaisons. He wants to be the boss' assistant, she wants to be the boss' wife, and both of them are so blinded by the concept of “boss” that they can't see Mr. Sheldrake for an untrustworthy rat. And there is no film where that is a more central concern than his 1960 film The Apartment, the film for which he won his second Oscar for directing, his third Oscar for writing, and his first for producing a Best Picture winner (though it was not his first film to take that award - The Lost Weekend beat it by 15 years). The Apartment is a 1960 American romantic comedy-drama film directed and produced by Billy Wilder from a screenplay he co-wrote with I. View film analysis.pdf from ENGLISH 111 at Sunset High School. It was nominated for the Grand Prix at the Film Festival of Montreal, the city in which the film was partially … So drawing the community together into the space has made them closer. Because Some Like It Hot had done so well with critics and audiences, producers wanted to find another vehicle for star Jack Lemmon. And the widescreen emphasizes space that separates the characters, or surrounds them with emptiness. It doesn’t try hard to be a comedy and it doesn’t try hard to be a romance. The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975: Amazon.de: Wojcik, Pamela Robertson: Fremdsprachige Bücher The wonderful ending to a great film - Billy Wilder's 'The Apartment', starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray L'Appartement is a strange film. %PDF-1.5 %���� The central characters played by Lemmon, “Bud” Baxter is a lonely office pion who wishes to climb the corporate ladder in a national insurance company. The Apartment. .succeeds in demonstrating the value of focusing on the apartment, and mise-en-scène more generally, as a heuristic device. “Sunset Boulevard” has William Holden as a paramour to a grotesque aging movie queen (Gloria Swanson), but there was pathos in the way her former husband (Erich von Stroheim) still worshiped at the shrine of her faded greatness. Like Baxter, she has not been forced into job prostitution, but chosen it. . It was also a key film for Shirley MacLaine, who had been around for five years in light comedies and had good scenes in “Some Came Running” (1958) but here emerged as a serious actress who would flower in the 1960s. Baxter has no girlfriend and, apparently, no family. As the film begins, we find out that C.C. City of GodA brief and quick dissection 2. The filmmaker, who often obsesses over the sound and production design in his films… Film Analysis: The Apartment. Lack of authority figures keeping the locals safe, Drug Lords are usually dominant and in power. It’s “The Jazz Singer,” updated for the TV dinner era. Total amnesia. SYNOPSIS: "A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own … THE GREAT GATSBY: Ch. Mr. Sheldrake is C.C. A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue. Released in 1960, it came only a year after the huge success of Wilder's Some Like it Hot. h�b```e``�����pA����r,�+00� (“Shut up and deal” would become almost as famous as “nobody's perfect,” the immortal closing lines of “Some Like it Hot.”). Cubicles would have come as revolutionary progress in this world. Revisiting the film almost 25 years later one suspects that the dreamlike atmosphere full of doubles and coincidences has something to do with this. Wilder's “The Lost Weekend” (1945) was made 17 years earlier but feels more contemporary in his treatment of alcoholism. "Bud" Baxter (Lemmon), an insurance clerk who, … The movie has been photographed in widescreen black and white. With Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston. This creates a dull, violent atmosphere, which can be shown through the film. Directed by Billy Wilder. In many movies, the characters hardly even seem to have jobs, but in “The Apartment” they have to be reminded that they have anything else. From the start, we see that the reason that Baxter performs so well at work is because he is lending his apartment to higher-level executives so that they can carry on extramarital affairs in the city far from the snooping eyes of their suburban families. “Some Like It Hot” is still funny, “Sunset Boulevard” is still a masterful gothic character comedy, and “The Apartment” is still tougher and more poignant than the material might have permitted. Und scheinbar ist Fortuna ihr endlich wohlgesinnt, denn sie bekommt den Zuschlag für … What's particularly perceptive is the way, after her suicide attempt, she hauls herself together and actually gives Sheldrake another chance. Baxter’s top executive and is conniving, powerful, and privileged. The underlying seriousness of MacLaine's performance helps anchor the picture--it raises the stakes, and steers it away from any tendency to become musical beds. The plot thickens when the clerk realizes that his building's elevator operator (MacLaine) is being taken for trysts by his married boss (MacMurray) to his apartment. The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975 (English Edition) eBook: Wojcik, Pamela Robertson: Amazon.de: Kindle-Shop Maybe this paper is to help me better understand this movie, with the dark lighting, grim ambience, filthy apartments with no skyline, and unsettling music. It left me feeling unsettled, angsty, and maybe, if you are reading this, you have some similar emotive … It is a remake of the 1996 French film L'Appartement, which in turn is loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Ms. Kubleik’s character transforms throughout the film. One way this could be seen is that when the community is drawn together into the courtyard during the climax of the film, the slow pan at the end seems to reveal the neighbourhood going back to normal as if nothing had happened, although you will notice Miss Lonely hearts in the composer’s apartment. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. Wicker Park is a 2004 American romantic thriller drama film directed by Paul McGuigan and starring Josh Hartnett, Rose Byrne, Diane Kruger and Matthew Lillard. However, it is the drugs that cause conflict and problems in the favelas, as through the decades the drugs become harder, starting at marijuana, and resulting in heroine. Wojcik offers an almost encyclopedic account of apartment-centered films, such that any postwar film and media scholar will find Wojcik’s careful analysis useful.” — Kathy M. Newman, American Quarterly “Wojcik . When Billy Wilder made “The Apartment” in 1960, “the organization man” was still a current term. endstream endobj 70 0 obj <>/Metadata 9 0 R/PageLabels 66 0 R/Pages 67 0 R/StructTreeRoot 23 0 R/Type/Catalog/ViewerPreferences<>>> endobj 71 0 obj <>/MediaBox[0 0 612 792]/Parent 67 0 R/Resources<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI]/XObject<>>>/Rotate 0/StructParents 0/Tabs/S/Type/Page>> endobj 72 0 obj <>stream Jack Lemmon plays C.C. “Glengarry Glen Ross” contains probably Lemmon's best performance. “The Days of Wine and Roses” has dated, in my opinion; the famous greenhouse scene looks more like overacting than alcoholism. In observing that “The Lost Weekend” hasn't dated, I could be making a comment about Wilder's work in general. As it happened, I watched “The Apartment” not long after Jack Lemmon's death, and looked at Blake Edwards' “The Days of Wine and Roses” (1962) and James Foley's “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992) at the same time. A major theme in the film is sexuality, the pursuit of sex, and extramarital affairs. When Billy Wilder made “The Apartment” in 1960, “the organization man” was still a current term. He has become the landlord for a series of their illicit affairs; they string him along with hints about raises and promotions. The design of Baxter's apartment makes his bedroom door, in the background just to the left of center, a focal point; in there reside the secrets of his masters, the reasons for his resentments, the arena for his own lonely slumber, and eventually the stage on which Miss Kubelik will play out the crucial transition in her life. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. On Christmas Eve, more than any other night of the year, the lonely person feels robbed of something that was there in childhood and isn't there anymore. She gets taken advantage of, lied to, and is constantly let down, but is completely in love with him. 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