Hays Code? I don't care about no stinkin Hays Code! I got your Hays Code right here!
Plot summary (with spoilers): CC Baxter is a youngish cubicle dweller (sans cubicle) who works in New York City. There are 9 million people in New York City. If you laid them all end to end, they'd reach Pakistan, and that's with an average height of 5'6'' (my, how we've grown since 1960). At Baxter's job, Blah Blah Inc, there are over 30,000 employees, and there are several thousand who work on Baxter's floor, in a freaking gigantic room that would give Stanley Kubrick a giant boner, with endless rows of desks and phones, and office drones to man them. Baxter stays late every night at the office, putting in hours of overtime. Not because he's a good employee, but...how can I put this delicately? Because his apartment is a block away from the office and his bosses like to use it as a place to bring women to fuck around on their wives with.
On one such night, Baxter's supervisor's special lady is taking her sweet time, and even though they were supposed to be out by nine (!); the light's are still on when Baxter comes walking down the block.
Finally, the pair dance out onto the street, and Baxter slinks up to his apartment. His neighbors are a lovely couple of Jewish stereotypes who think he's meshuggah, what with all the ladies he brings around! And drink like a fish, he does. Oy! Jewish husband is a doctor and warns Baxter he'll die young with all the drinking and whoring. Of course, Baxter doesn't want the neighbors to know the truth, that his supervisors walk all over him. He would rather the neighbors think he's a tomcat than a pussy.
Later that night, a phone call wakes Baxter up. It's two am, and another manager just met a lovely lady in a bar down the block, and does Baxter mind giving up the place for forty five minutes? The lady does a sexy little dance at the bar. Make that thirty minutes! (This manager is played by none other than Ray Walston, aka the great Mr. Hand. He still looked old in 1960). Baxter grumbles a bit, but does as he's told, after the manger implies a promotion may be forthcoming.
The next day at work, Baxter juggles appointments with four different supervisors who each have "needs" on different nights and afternoons. Hey, one of them's Larry Tate! Hey, Larry! Baxter gets a message that the big boss man, Mr. Sheldrake, wanting to see him right away. Baxter thinks that his "roommates" must've put in a good word, so he skeedadles over to the elevators to head up the the top floor. The elevator operator is Fran Kubelik, a pre-crazy Shirley MacLaine. They know each other and flirt a bit.
Mr. Sheldrake cuts right to the chase: He knows what's been going on at the apartment, and he's very disappointed. Baxter fumbles and stutters and says it will never happen again. But of course, Sheldrake would very much like for it to happen again. He's a got a girl, you see... He gives Baxter two tickets to The Music Man and tells him to clear out for the evening. Oh, and also, how would he like the corner office? Baxter leaves the office and wanders back to the elevator, walking on the clouds. He asks Ms. Kubelik out for the evening. She says she already has a date. He tells her to end it quickly, and meet him at 8 for The Music Man. She's charmed by Levine's hard sell, and agrees to meet him.
But first she has that other date. I wonder who with? I doubt it's anyone import-oh.
Kubelik sits across from Sheldrake, sipping her soup. She wants to know if the relationship is going anywhere. She wants to know if he'll ever leave his wife. She wants to know how someone as ugly as he could get someone like her, anyway. Oh wait, that's me. Anyways, Sheldrake says all the right things, and they commence to Baxter's apartment for some fucking, while Baxter stands outside the theatre, two tickets in hand. Cue sad trombone. Nobody has any love for old Gil, dangit! Hours later, Baxter returns home and sees a compact with a cracked mirror that was left at his apartment by Kubelik. He brings it to Sheldrake the next day.
Six weeks later, office Christmas party. Everyone is drinking and carousing and basically reenacting Mad Men's season one finale. We learn that Baxter has closed off apartment privileges to everyone but Sheldrake.
Baxter's getting pretty loaded at the party, and he sees Kubelik at the elevators and starts chatting her up. She says she thought he was mad at her for standing him up, but he claims to be over it now. He drags her over to the main party, runs off to get drinks. Kubelik's stuck making conversation with Ms. Olson, Sheldrake's secretary. Olson drunkenly slurs that she knows all about Kubelik's encounters with Sheldrake, and that she's just one girl in a very long line.
Baxter returns with the drinks. Kubelik is stunned and wants to get out of there. Baxter takes her into his office, where he models for her a new bowler hat he just purchased. That bowler hat is pretty bitchin. Isn't it time hats came back for dudes? I say yes! Who wants to start? He wants to know what he looks like in the hat, so Kubelik hands him her compact, and....the synapses start firing for Baxter. He politely disengages from Kubelik, who of course is totally distracted by this point anyway.
Later that evening, Christmas Eve, Baxter's at a bar getting snokered. Some weird lady hits on him by asking him what he thinks of Castro. "What's a Castro?" says Baxter, in a bit of unintentional real-life foreshadowing.
Meanwhile, at Baxter's apartment, Sheldrake and Kubelik are having it out. She's sobbing uncontrollably and tells him what Olson said, while he says douchey shit like I love you, but now's not the right time, and you've wasted our hour, I've got to go catch the train now and be with my family. Kubelik says she needs to wash up first. He leaves. She goes into the bathroom, scrubs her face, then looks in the medicine cabinet. She sees some prescription sleeping pills. She grabs the bottle, and gets some scotch as well, and heads into the bedroom. Whoa. Hey, wait a minute. I thought this was some silly comedy. What's this all about?
Baxter and the lady are dancing around the bar, cheek to cheek. The bartender eventually kicks them out. Baxter checks his watch and says his apartment is clear now. They arrive, and the lady starts making drinks, while Baxter puts on a record. They chat about a bunch of idle nonsense, and the whole time my heart's in my throat. Finally, Baxter notices a woman's pair of gloves on the table. He scoops them up, then looks around for a place to hide them. Finally, he heads to the bedroom, opens the door, and throws them in. He does a double take after seeing Kubelik on the bed. He tries to wake her up, sees the empty bottle, then dashes over to the neighbor's. He tells Dr. Jew that his lady next door took too many sleeping pills. The doctor races over: Baxter immediately kicks the other girl out.
In a rather lengthy and intense scene, with no music on the soundtrack, the doctor forces Kubelik to vomit, then injects her with something, gives her smelling salts, coffee, and slaps her hard about a half a dozen times. Baxter lies and says they had a fight and she went home early and then he found her that way. Dr. Jew asks why he brought another woman home. Baxter reiterates lamely that they had just had a fight, after all.
"You know, Mr. Baxter. You're a real sweetheart." Dr. Jew snarls.
Finally, Kubelik is more or less okay, and Dr. Jew says she must have bed rest for 48 hours, and to also grow up and be a mensch already! Oy! Baxter wants to know what a mensch is. "A human being!"
He finally leaves and Baxter makes a "person to person" call to Sheldrake and tells him what happened. Sheldrake is less than sympathetic and tells Baxter to handle it.
The next day, Kubelik and Baxter bond over gin rummy and stories of depression and unrequited love. By the second day, Kubelik's brother-in-law comes looking for her and takes her back to his place, after making the wrong assumptions about Baxter and popping him in the jaw. Meanwhile, Sheldrake fires Ms. Olson and her big mouth. Olson and her big mouth make a call to Mrs. Sheldrake before leaving with her things.
The next day, Baxter decides to go into work and tell Sheldrake that he wants Kubelik for himself. And since Sheldrake clearly doesn't want her himself, it should be fine. Except that now Sheldrake has changed his tune. Why? "Well, if you must know, I fired Ms. Olson, and she saw to it that my wife fired me". Baxter wearily congratulates Sheldrake on finding love again so quickly. Sheldrake makes it clear that Kubelik is still for fun, but he needs a date on New Year's Eve, anyway. He tells Baxter he'll need the apartment that night, as all the great New York hotels are no doubt already booked. Baxter tells him to cram it. Sheldrake says who do you think you are? "I'm a mensch!" he storms out, and that really fucking cracked me up.
And in the end, on New Year's Eve, Kubelik learns that Baxter quit rather than let Sheldrake take her there, and she ditches Sheldrake right then and there and runs back to the apartment and into Baxter's loving arms. Of course now that's he's unemployed, he'll be evicted in a month or two, but let's let these two crazy kids have their moment.
Review: First off, totally totally shocked at the subject matter. Wiki says the Hays Code was enforced from 1934 to 1968, and depictions of adultery were banned during that time. But apparently, there were a few hits like Some Like it Hot and Suddenly Last Summer that came out in the late fifties, that defied the Code and still did gangbusters at the box office, so by the time The Apartment came around, the code was weakened. Of course, in 1968 it was replaced by its evil younger brother, the MPAA. Second, the tonal shift from light-hearted sex romp to full-on near-suicide tragedy was completely unexpected, but entirely welcome. It was almost at the exact half way point, and though I was enjoying the fun dialog and original premise (how has this never been remade?), I still thought I could pretty much predict the rest of the movie and every last beat in it, and was starting to tune out. The suicide attempt shocked me out of my complacency, and got my attention for the last half of the movie, even though it did ultimately end in more or less a rom-com cliche.
There was a lot of nuance here, with great performances by everybody, and Jack Lemmon and Shirley are extremely winning and charming. The movie has a message that on paper seems kinda trite (stand up for yourself!) but played out in a very poignant way. It's one of those chicken or egg things that I'm not versed enough on old movies to know, though: was the ending a worn-out cliche at the time, or has it just been emulated enough times since then that it seems that way now? Either way, I was mentally tuning out in the last twenty minutes or so, and half to dock half a star for that. Rules are rules. But the fun laughs of the first third and the shock of the second third more than make up for it. Black and white movies, perhaps I've misjudged you a bit.
Stars: Four out of five.
Next, "The Wild Bunch", and I'm probably going to have to break down and buy "Titanic".
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