33rd Academy Awards · 1961
The Apartment
Directed byCooked up by Billy Wilder
“Movie-wise, there has never been anything like it - laugh-wise, love-wise, or otherwise-wise!”
“Corporate ladder? Nah, Baxter chose his crush and his dignity 🍝”
The storyThe lore 📖
Bud Baxter is a minor clerk in a huge New York insurance company, until he discovers a quick way to climb the corporate ladder. He lends out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. Although he often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits, one night he's left with a major problem to solve.
C.C. Baxter is an office NPC at a giant insurance company who climbs the ladder by letting his bosses borrow his apartment for their secret dates (sus, bestie). But his real problem? He's highkey crushing on Fran, the elevator operator, who's tangled up with the big boss. Baxter has to decide if a promotion is worth losing his self-respect 🏢💔.
What critics & audiences sayThe receipts 🧾
Tomatometer
94%
Fresh
#30 of 98 winnersFamous linesLines living rent free
Bud: I love you, Miss Kubelik...Did you hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.
Fran: Shut up and deal!
Fran: Why can't I ever fall in love with somebody nice like you?
Bud: Yeah, well, that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.
…When you're in love with a married man you shouldn't wear mascara.
I've decided to become a mensch. You know what that means? A human being.
Bud: The mirror... It's broken.
Fran: Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.
Some people take, some people get took. And they know they're getting took and there's nothing they can do about it.
Sheldrake: But this is the key to the executive washroom.
Bud: That's right, Mr. Sheldrake. I won't be needing it, because I'm all washed up around here.
Y'know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe. I mean shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand and there you were.
Sheldrake: …right away, they think you're gonna divorce your wife. Now I ask you - is that fair?
Bud: No, sir, it's very unfair, especially to your wife.
Sorry, Mr. Sheldrake, I'm full up. You'll have to take the next elevator.
Quotes via Wikiquote
Fun factsFacts that go hard 🤓
- Jack Lemmon's character strains spaghetti through a tennis racket in one of only two scenes where Billy Wilder, who usually demanded exact adherence to the script, let Lemmon improvise.Wikipedia · Production
- Art director Alexandre Trauner used forced perspective for the vast insurance office, filling the back rows with successively smaller desks and people, ending with children.Wikipedia · Production
- Fred MacMurray said that after the film came out, women berated him in the street for making a 'dirty filthy movie,' and one hit him with her purse.Wikipedia · Reception
- The story was partly inspired by a Hollywood scandal in which producer Walter Wanger shot agent Jennings Lang, who had used a low-level employee's apartment for trysts with Wanger's wife Joan Bennett.Wikipedia · Production
- Billy Wilder first conceived the idea from Brief Encounter in the 1940s, but couldn't make a comedy about adultery under the Hays Code at the time.Wikipedia · Production
- During a scene where Jack Lemmon was meant to mime being punched, he was accidentally knocked down for real, and Wilder kept the shot in the film.Wikipedia · Production
- Kevin Spacey dedicated his American Beauty Oscar to Jack Lemmon's performance in The Apartment, a film Sam Mendes watched as inspiration before shooting.Wikipedia · Awards and nominations
- Fred MacMurray got the role of Sheldrake only because Wilder's original choice, Paul Douglas, died unexpectedly.Wikipedia · Production
- Since The Apartment, only two black-and-white films have won Best Picture: Schindler's List and The Artist.Wikipedia · Awards and nominations
- The film became the 1968 Broadway musical Promises, Promises by Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Neil Simon.Wikipedia · Stage adaptation