Monday, September 18, 2017

Best Picture of 1960: The Apartment

Love affairs are never easy. When it comes to the hiding and the sneaking it's hard to have one. That is when The Apartment comes in. C.C. Baxter, the owner of the apartment, is set on a crazy adventure when several of his co-workers find out that he has a wonderful apartment, a little out of the way, and the perfect place to conduct their affairs without their families knowing. Everything is working out mostly well until the personnel director, Jeff Sheldrake, finds out about the apartment. Sheldrake is cheating on his wife with a woman from the office. He has been stringing this poor girl on for over a year. When Sheldrake is given the Apartment for his affair he goes a step too far and breaks the girls heart. When Baxter is finally allowed to come home he find that the girl has overdosed on sleeping pills in an attempted suicide.

The last few films that I have gone over have been known to have all the myths and crazy facts about the movie. This film was way less dramatic to make. The producers originally wanted to make the film in 1940 but the Hayes Code during that time made it impossible to do so. Sexual promiscuity was not permitted to be filmed during those times. However, after the film was released it did change the career of one man in the film, Fred MacMurray. According to MacMurray, a woman one day berated him about darker role in this "dirty filthy movie" and hit him with her purse. After that he never did a role that dark every again. This is movie is also very special for the times that we are in. Over the next few years the use of Black and White films were fading. Since the release of this film in 1959 only two films shot in black and white have won the Best Picture Award: Schindler's List and The Artist. In addition to beating out United Artists The Alamo and Elmer Gantry; 20th Century Fox's Sons and Lovers; and Warner Brothers' The Sundowners, this United Artists' film was also selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1994.

Jack Lemmon is just one of those people who you love to watch for a good laugh. When I first saw that he was in this movie I was very excited. However, when I saw that this film was a drama I got very worried. I have never seen him in a drama and I thought he was not going to be that great. How often to we forget though that the comedians that we love are also human beings as well and experience all of the emotions that we do? We forget that they specialize in being funny but they are capable of being some of the most dynamic actors we have seen on film. Jack Lemmon proved just that in this film. After seeing his performance it didn't shock me that he was nominated to Best Actor for his role. This was not the film I was expecting to watch but it's a film that I am very glad that I got to experience.

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