Dr. Dreyfuss (played by Jack Kruschen) to C.C. Baxter (played by Jack Lemmon): “As your neighbor, I'd like to kick your keester clear around the block...I don't know what you did to that girl in there, and don't tell me, but it was bound to happen, the way you carry on. Live now, pay later. Diner's Club! Why don't you grow up, Baxter? Be a mensch! You know what that means?...A mensch - a human being!”—The Apartment (1960), written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, directed by Billy Wilder
Often, I read the first few lines of reviews to sense whether the book, film or play in question is something I want to pay for. But increasingly, I’m sorry I read even that little of them. When negative ones don’t depress my interest in seeing a show I might otherwise have given a chance, their sheer idiocy raises my blood pressure.
The current Broadway run of the Burt Bacharach-Hal Davis musical from the Sixties, Promises, Promises, for instance, has been greeted with something less than hosannas, sometimes for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the show.
Some claim that, even aside from the songs, the subject matter of the musical is dated. Even an Encores revival 13 years ago, The New York Times’ Ben Brantley thinks, only exposed the original’s “leering view of secretaries as disposable playthings.”
All those drunken office holiday parties, all those company execs sizing up the delectable female flesh all around them, would today be grist for sexual harassment suits. The general lechery level, it’s argued, is drastically down. The leering attitude toward hanky-panky is so retrograde, the argument goes.
I imagine that if these same critics feel that way about Neil Simon’s book adaptation, then the Wilder-Diamond screenplay which served as its source would hardly be exempt from their reasoning. If that’s the case, balderdash, I say. If it’s true that powerful men are being careful about their entanglements with women, then why do so many politicos continue to encounter zipper trouble?
In any case, almost anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with corporate life in 2010 would say that the opportunities for male executives taking a walk on the wild side have only expanded since Wilder’s cynical masterpiece, which premiered on this date 50 years ago in the gray-flannel-suit city in which it was set.
As for the argument that Wilder was winking at the whole corporate passing parade—well, the sequence from which the quote above comes—as well as the accompanying image—shows just how preposterous that whole argument is.
The elevator girl on whom C.C. “Chuck” Baxter has developed a major crush, Fran Kubelik (played by Shirley MacLaine), has attempted suicide in his apartment on Christmas Eve, heartbroken over her affair with her boss and Chuck’s, philandering Jeff Sheldrake (played by Fred MacMurray). Chuck, having enlisted the help of Dr. Dreyfuss, is forced to listen to a first-class tongue-lashing from his neighbor that is the moral high-point of the film.
This is not the first time The Apartment has turned crucially on perception—not only how other people see us, but how we see ourselves.
Chuck’s earnest mastery of insurance arcane and corporate lingo gets him nowhere—until he stumbles into lending his apartment out to someone at his company in a position to help him. At the recent office party, Fran has just given a hint about her growing despair when she accepts from Chuck her broken mirror that he’s found. The broken glass reflects how she feels, she tells him.
Not long afterward, in this scene, Dreyfuss mistakenly believes that Chuck has been bringing one girl after another up to his apartment for liaisons. The reality is not that much better: Chuck’s climb up the corporate ladder has been facilitated by allowing his apartment to be used for senior execs’ affairs.
The scolding by Dreyfuss (delivered in terrific fashion by Jack Kruschen, who received a well-deserved Oscar nomination) is salutary for Chuck, an amiable guy who, by degrees, is learning all too readily how to use people. The doctor might be wrong about what Chuck really does in his apartment, but not that he’s gone astray. The climactic line from this speech—“Be a mensch!”—begins Chuck’s redemption.
The entire sequence following the discovery of Fran’s limp, near-lifeless body—the endless walking to keep her awake, Dreyfuss’ shocking slaps on the face, his verbal slaps at Chuck—is painful to watch. It’s also one of the best scenes in the entire Wilder filmography—one to which Wilder admirer Cameron Crowe pays direct homage in his own Oscar-winning original screenplay 40 years later, Almost Famous, when Kate Hudson’s sweet groupie Penny Lane also needs to be revived after having her heart broken by a thoughtless male.
From the first time I saw The Apartment nearly 40 years ago, it became one of my favorite films. For anyone wanting something as bracing as Dr. Dreyfuss’ scolding and slaps during the often-sappy holiday season, you can do what I’ve done and watch this more often than It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey’s life is saved, but the regeneration of Chuck Baxter is the funnier, more tenuous—and harder-won—victory.
Often, I read the first few lines of reviews to sense whether the book, film or play in question is something I want to pay for. But increasingly, I’m sorry I read even that little of them. When negative ones don’t depress my interest in seeing a show I might otherwise have given a chance, their sheer idiocy raises my blood pressure.
The current Broadway run of the Burt Bacharach-Hal Davis musical from the Sixties, Promises, Promises, for instance, has been greeted with something less than hosannas, sometimes for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the show.
Some claim that, even aside from the songs, the subject matter of the musical is dated. Even an Encores revival 13 years ago, The New York Times’ Ben Brantley thinks, only exposed the original’s “leering view of secretaries as disposable playthings.”
All those drunken office holiday parties, all those company execs sizing up the delectable female flesh all around them, would today be grist for sexual harassment suits. The general lechery level, it’s argued, is drastically down. The leering attitude toward hanky-panky is so retrograde, the argument goes.
I imagine that if these same critics feel that way about Neil Simon’s book adaptation, then the Wilder-Diamond screenplay which served as its source would hardly be exempt from their reasoning. If that’s the case, balderdash, I say. If it’s true that powerful men are being careful about their entanglements with women, then why do so many politicos continue to encounter zipper trouble?
In any case, almost anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with corporate life in 2010 would say that the opportunities for male executives taking a walk on the wild side have only expanded since Wilder’s cynical masterpiece, which premiered on this date 50 years ago in the gray-flannel-suit city in which it was set.
As for the argument that Wilder was winking at the whole corporate passing parade—well, the sequence from which the quote above comes—as well as the accompanying image—shows just how preposterous that whole argument is.
The elevator girl on whom C.C. “Chuck” Baxter has developed a major crush, Fran Kubelik (played by Shirley MacLaine), has attempted suicide in his apartment on Christmas Eve, heartbroken over her affair with her boss and Chuck’s, philandering Jeff Sheldrake (played by Fred MacMurray). Chuck, having enlisted the help of Dr. Dreyfuss, is forced to listen to a first-class tongue-lashing from his neighbor that is the moral high-point of the film.
This is not the first time The Apartment has turned crucially on perception—not only how other people see us, but how we see ourselves.
Chuck’s earnest mastery of insurance arcane and corporate lingo gets him nowhere—until he stumbles into lending his apartment out to someone at his company in a position to help him. At the recent office party, Fran has just given a hint about her growing despair when she accepts from Chuck her broken mirror that he’s found. The broken glass reflects how she feels, she tells him.
Not long afterward, in this scene, Dreyfuss mistakenly believes that Chuck has been bringing one girl after another up to his apartment for liaisons. The reality is not that much better: Chuck’s climb up the corporate ladder has been facilitated by allowing his apartment to be used for senior execs’ affairs.
The scolding by Dreyfuss (delivered in terrific fashion by Jack Kruschen, who received a well-deserved Oscar nomination) is salutary for Chuck, an amiable guy who, by degrees, is learning all too readily how to use people. The doctor might be wrong about what Chuck really does in his apartment, but not that he’s gone astray. The climactic line from this speech—“Be a mensch!”—begins Chuck’s redemption.
The entire sequence following the discovery of Fran’s limp, near-lifeless body—the endless walking to keep her awake, Dreyfuss’ shocking slaps on the face, his verbal slaps at Chuck—is painful to watch. It’s also one of the best scenes in the entire Wilder filmography—one to which Wilder admirer Cameron Crowe pays direct homage in his own Oscar-winning original screenplay 40 years later, Almost Famous, when Kate Hudson’s sweet groupie Penny Lane also needs to be revived after having her heart broken by a thoughtless male.
From the first time I saw The Apartment nearly 40 years ago, it became one of my favorite films. For anyone wanting something as bracing as Dr. Dreyfuss’ scolding and slaps during the often-sappy holiday season, you can do what I’ve done and watch this more often than It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey’s life is saved, but the regeneration of Chuck Baxter is the funnier, more tenuous—and harder-won—victory.
