The Apartment (not rated)
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This came out in 1960 (fifteen years before I was born), but I didn't see it until 2021. I vaguely recall reading a glowing retrospective review of it quite a few years back, so when I saw a cheap used copy in a store one day, I bought it (probably at least a year before I got around to watching it). And now that I've seen it, I can understand the hype. I should say it starts out as a comedy, but the latter half of the movie is much more a dark drama (albeit with more bits of comedy sprinkled throughout). I think it's the dramatic aspect of the movie that made me like it more than the comedic side.

So there's this guy named C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), but certain people call him 'Buddy Boy', a low-level worker at an insurance company. There are four higher-up guys at the company (one of them played by Ray Walston) who take turns using his apartment to have affairs. I'm kind of torn between disdaining Baxter for letting this happen, and feeling sorry him because he clearly isn't happy about it, and I suspect that he has little choice, because he might lose his job if he refused. Though they do all talk him up to the personnel manager, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), so that he might get a promotion. And eventually he does get a promotion, but Mr. Sheldrake also wants to use Baxter's apartment for an affair of his own. Meanwhile, Baxter is interested in an elevator operator at the company named Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), and I'd say he's kind of stalkery about it, so that's another thing I don't really like about him. But he's still nicer than any of the other guys in the movie. Unfortunately, it turns out Kubelik is the woman with whom Sheldrake is having an affair. Anyway, Baxter's neighbors have no idea of these arrangements, so they think the sounds coming from his apartment are all him, with different women almost every night.

All this is played for laughs, until the movie takes a dark turn, the nature of which I don't want to spoil. But it does result in Baxter getting to spend some time with Kubelik, so they begin to get closer, even though she's still in love with Sheldrake (despite knowing she shouldn't be, because he obviously doesn't really care about her). And I guess I don't want to reveal any more of the plot, except to say it has a happy ending (sort of). It's complicated. But all in all, I have to say it's a really good movie, especially once it gets serious.