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Revisiting The Apartment 

I recently returned from a wonderful trip to New York City in a true blur of theatre-delirium, a state from which I must confess I am stillhaving trouble coming down. Angela Lansbury once said "One of themost wonderful--and terrible -- things about theatre is that it's amemory". The great Lansbury was right: in the theatre, the only rewind button is in your mind. However, I am happy to report thatsometimes there is a way that one can recapture the magic --at leastpartially-- and perhaps acquire some new spine tingling moments inthe process. Here is how you can do it.

The magic that caught me was in two productions in particular, bothof which will be closing in a few weeks: The revivals of  A Little Night  Music and Promises, Promises. For the former, I am at a loss ( I donot recommend the 1977 film version) but for the latter -ah! I am inluck!! Because there is no way to better relive the pleasures of 

 Promises, Promises than through The Apartment (1960).

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I have always had a special fascination for that most interestinganimal, the un-original Broadway musical. It is easy to understand

 why musicals are frequently adapted from successful, non-musical

source material: they already have proven track records.Unfortunately, for every  Pygmalion/My Fair Lady there is aCaesar and Cleopatra/Her First Roman. So, in the late 1960s whenthe idea to translate Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning masterpiece The

 Apartment into a Broadway musical first surfaced, all were notconvinced it was a surefire proposition. Even after Neil Simon, BurtBacharach and Hal David signed on, its producer, the redoubtableDavid Merrick, still had a few. But The Apartment turned out to bean ideal template for a Broadway musical. Even in the most

optimistic of times, Wilder was an unapologetic cynic - frequently piercing the most bilious of complacent bubbles with his sharp anduncompromising wit. And while The Apartment is no exception tothis Wilder tenant, it also contains an element that is essential for asuccessful musical: a sentimental heart. And although Wilder doeshis best to camouflage, its presence can be felt in every frame: fromJack Lemmon's wistful longing for the elevator girl of his dreams, toShirley MacLaine's heartbreaking confession of love for her married

lover, The Apartment wears its raw and overwhelming emotion onits sleeve. Unusual for a filmmaker who's stock in trade was alwaysthe "trade" of love-- but perhaps not really. After all, scratch a cynic,and you will most likely uncover a wounded romantic; and thecharacters in The Apartment are all wounded romantics attemptingto find a bit of respite in a harsh and cynical world.

Lemmon's C.C. Baxter was the template for what became his screenpersona: the "invisible" everyman struggling to be noticed in an

indifferent world (think The Fortune Cookie (1966), Save the Tiger (1973), The Out-of-Towners (1970). But what was so appealingabout Lemmon, and what made him the perfect Wilder hero, wasthat he always instilled in these characters a hint of the eternaloptimist. Continually thwarted in his struggle to move far from themadding crowd's ignoble strife, Baxter remains remarkably 

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sanguine. Even when he discovers that the object of his affections,

the luminous Shirley MacLaine, is the girl who's been sleeping in his bed--with his boss--he remains steadfast in his devotion to her. By the end of the film, Baxter has been left literally beaten and bruisedafter tangling with the "big boys". Yet, left alone in the ruins of hislife, he doesn't pop his revolver, he pops a bottle of champagne.Baxter is down but not out...beaten up, but not beaten.

Likewise, Shirley MacLaine also sets the template for her decade-long portrayals of hookers with hearts of gold. Her impossibly fresh

face with its cherubic cheeks and eyes set wide in perpetual wonder was the perfect counterpoint to the sensual and vulnerable womenthat lay beneath—women who frequently traded their bodies in thehope of emotional compensation. (Think   Some Came Running(1958),   Irma La Douce (1963),   Sweet Charity (1970). In The

 Apartment , Fran Kubelik is a prostitute not of her body, but of herheart; a behavior which, in the end, proves much more injurious.

  Witness, for example, the devastating scene in which Fred

MacMurray's loathsome boss, Sheldrake, hands Fran $100 as aChristmas "present". Wilder is very careful to make sure we realizethat a sexual liaison has not occurred between the two; this ispayment for emotional  services rendered. In the aftermath of thedevastation, Fran attempts suicide. No one was better than the

 young MacLaine in portraying this sort of emotional wanton, andher heart-wrenching performance won the actress her second Oscar

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nomination.

  All this seems to be pretty dour stuff for something labeled a"comedy" –but, in true Wilder fashion, it is this attempted suicide

 which finally brings our disparate hero and heroine together. Thisseamless melding of tragedy with comedy is a Wilder hallmark, andis very much the emotional environment in which The Apartment dwells. Like life, it is a comedy which tips precariously on the edgeof tragedy. It's also the brilliant Wilder "push-pull" -- leading usdown one path, and then suddenly unexpectedly shoving us downanother. This is no more magnificently illustrated than in the film’sfinal moments. As Shirley MacLaine romantically rushes throughthe streets of New York and back to Lemmon (to the strains of 

  Adolphe Deutsch's lush theme), our romantic assumptions of happily ever after seem to be coming to certain fruition. Then, justas she (and the music) reach their crescendo, both are jarringly halted by what sounds like a gunshot. Comedy tipping on tragedy.Racing to the door of the apartment in a panic, she begins poundingon it in terror, only to greeted by a very much alive Jack Lemmonholding an over-flowing champagne bottle. Tragedy dips back intocomedy . And when the lovers are finally re-united, and Baxter

confesses his love for Miss Kubelik, what are we left with? Ourlovers embracing in a romantic clinch?

No. A game of cards. And one of the greatest final lines in movie history. From the man who gave us the surreal "No body's perfect" the year before in Some Like it Hot , we get the most pragmatic of summations:

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“Shut up, and deal”.

In life…sometimes…that is all you can do.

 ALL WRITTEN MATERIAL C) 2010 Tony Maietta