Number 17: The Apartment (Best Picture Ranking)

I did not care very much for The Apartment the very first time I saw it – but I was most likely also young when that happened and an overdue re-observe of Billy Wilder’s Oscar winner showed me that this is really 1 of the ideal ‚dark comedies’ Hollywood has ever done.

It tells the tale of C. C. Baxter who performs for an insurance firm and occasionally makes it possible for the supervisors of his company to use his condominium for their secret affairs. Even even though C. C. is unwilling about it, he also hopes that one day his ‘help’ may possibly spend off. But the whole arrangement begins to fall apart when he learns that a single of the mistresses is Skip Kubelik, an elevator operator from his organization, with whom he is secretly in really like.

It is a story that is full of sarcastic and dim humor, desperation and hope – and set collectively incredibly entertainingly. Jack Lemmon has perhaps in no way been greater than as the lonely and disappointed personnel who has to snooze in the park while his manager is possessing an affair in his apartment. He handles comedy and drama with incredible ease while turning his C. C. into 1 of the most loveable movie figures of all time. And Shirley MacLaine took her fairly thankless element and provides the movie’s most shifting and emotional moments. She demonstrates Fran’s guilt more than her affair and her inability to lead her daily life the way she needs it whilst also offering different one particular-liners with fantastic influence. Fred MacMurray also impresses as the male with no a conscience.

The screenplay of The Condominium also justifies a specific mention. From the initial ‘efficiency-wise’ to the previous ‘cookie-wise’, it tells a really dim and really disturbing tale of unrequited enjoy, extramarital affairs, tried suicide and the question of how much one is inclined to go to get ahead in the company globe and mixes it with a excellent deal of unforgettable humor and believable characters.

The sweet tale of two men and women who battle with their very own lives and do items they really do not want to do in buy to achieve a tiny joy is even now as effective and memorable these days as it was fifty years ago.