The Apartment - Billy Wilder - 1960

★★★★★-The Apartment. When you're in love with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara... That's how it crumbles... you know, cookie-wise. Jesus. I adored this movie. Jack Lemmon is seriously phenomenal in everything I've ever seen him in. Also, Billy Wilder is three-for-three in the movies I've blogged about, also loved Some Like It Hot and Sunset Boulevard, and half a dozen others I've seen at some point in life are also dope. Don't see this ever listed among the greatest movies of all time but it should be. Hands down the best and most rewatchable romantic comedy, IMO.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Director Billy Wilder's customary cynicism is leavened here by tender humor, romance, and genuine pathos.

Directed by Wilder, he and one I. A. L. Diamond co-wrote the screenplay. Nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning five including Best Picture, Best Director, and Beast Screenplay. Gist of the movie is that insurance agent Bud Baxter (Lemmon) allows his higher ups to use his Upper West Side apartment to take their mistresses for affairs with the promise of moving up the corporate ladder. When Bud's prick of a boss, Sheldrake played by Fred MacMurray (whom I recognize from Double Indemnity and as the dad in My Three Sons) brings elevator operator Fran Kubelik, played by the lovely Shirley MacLaine, a woman that Bud is secretly in love with, shit gets real.

This movie is way darker of a romantic comedy than we are used to today featuring attempted suicide and married men promising to leave their wives, we know how that is, right ladies? Behind the concept was even darker shit as Diamond incorporated a life experience of one of his friends who came home after breaking up with his girlfriend and finding her dead, having committed suicide in his bed into Wilder's original comedy about adultery. Yeesh. Also included elements of another true story where Hollywood agent Jennings Lang was shot by producer Walter Wanger for having an affair with his wife, actress Joan Bennett, having used the apartment of one his low-level employees to conduct the affair.

A few bullet points... Shirley MacLaine is adorably cute. Pixie hair, quick wit, cosmopolitan. She is a cool chick. Easy to see how Bud genuinely falls for her. You feel protective of her as Sheldrake does what he does to her. It's really heartbreaking when she almost kills herself which everyone assumes was Bud's fault as his neighbors think he is just constantly bringing chicks home. The physician down the hall, one Dr. Dreyfuss played wonderfully by Jack Kruschen who was nominated for Best Supporting, who saves Fran's life, along with the landlady, give Bud hell for breaking the girl's heart when in reality it was Sheldrake (though it did look bad for him since he was drunk and brought back this other woman). Then, after she spends a couple of days at his apartment, her brother in-law, she is living with him and her sister, shows up and kicks his ass. Good stuff. Also, Lemmon easily wins the movie. Dude is funny and genuinely good. Kevin Spacey dedicated his Best Actor Oscar for American Beauty (maybe the movie from the last 20 years to age the worst that was once considered good) to Lemmon.

Some Like It Hot is the greatest movie of all time

Some Like It Hot. Indeed. Another Billy Wilder movie. Sincerely great. Weird, though. First we have other worldly icon Marilyn Monroe jumping and running around and doing stuff. She is such an icon that my brain won't allow me to see her as like a real human who once lived. It's almost like Rosie the Riveter, Uncle Sam, or the Marlboro Man suddenly being a real person and doing movies. Kind of how it happened in real life, too, more on that later. But, yeah, she isn't ugly, that Marilyn. And she is awfully active in this movie.

Then there is the whole dudes in drag to escape the mafia to travel with an all-female band whilst still trying to score with ladies in said band. It continues to get weirder once they all get to the resort in Florida with Jack Lemmon's character going out with this rich guy and getting him off his massive boat so that Tony Curtis's character can hop on with Marilyn so that she thinks he is rich. Lemmon doesn't let the guy like make out with him or anything but he sort of gets into it in a total mid-century heterosexual way, which is insane, ultimately getting engaged to the guy. Finally, at the end, Lemmon comes clean, saying he's a dude and what not. "Nobody's perfect," the guy says. Meh. But, big but, I love the shit of the rest of this movie.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Some Like It Hot: A spry, quick-witted farce that never drags.

So, this is definitely my favorite Marilyn movie of the five I've seen (though I haven't seen The Asphalt Jungle yet which is near the top of my list to watch) and probably in my top 15 to 20. Marilyn is what she is, light and bubbly and super attractive. Plus you can pretty much see her nipples the entire movie.

A bit about the Tony Curtis character here. That guy's character, one Joe, is a fucking asshole. He uses info he acquires whilst posing as Josephine to try to score with Marilyn by pretending to be someone he is not. This is really fucked up and rapey. Not fucking cool man and possibly a sex crime. Also, the whole, you know, turning a movie about witnessing the most notorious mob hit of them all, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, into a comedy is a bold choice. Totally works though.

Yeah. Want to reiterate how much I loved this movie and what a true treasure Jack Lemmon was. In a  movie with Marilyn and TC, Lemmon wins the movie, easily. He fucking brings it and is hilarious. Wins it indeed.