Evidently, everything in the spoiler is a spoiler.
1.
Year: 1960
Film: The Apartment
Where Found: Amazon Prime / MGM
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine and others
Comments before watching: This seems like a low-key start in many ways. Not only is this a film I have never watched, it is a film of which I have never heard. I've also never heard of the films it beat to the Oscar, other than John Wayne's The Alamo, so it may have been a weak year. Among the cast, only Jack Lemmon is familiar to me. It is also in black and white - not the only film in the Best Picture list to be in black and white, but I think the only one not made so for knowing reasons. This arrived as JFK took the oath, just on the cusp of the crossover to technicolour. As such, if you only have eyes for colour it may be one you wish to skip. I, however, have no such luxury, so off we go. The great thing about this is that I have absolutely no idea what to expect. I don't even know what sort of film this is.
Premise: Jack Lemmon is a junior office man who lets his superiors use his apartment for their carnal habits - to his own detriment.
Breakdown:
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This is actually a simple, but well-constructed comedy - 60 years ago, such films could win Best Picture - with moments of absurdity and moments of heartfelt sincerity, the latter brought to life by the lead performances and by the charming hits of the theme music. There aren't many true laugh-out-loud moments but Jack Lemmon's performance is certainly a fine one. Without looking, it wouldn't surprise me if he was at least nominated for Best Actor. He was coming off Some Like It Hot at this point so must have been one of the biggest stars around, and it shows - his performance here is quite Hanksian, at least from the time when the younger Hanks was taking himself less seriously.
This is a New York film, in some respects a distant precursor to Woody Allen. Although it dates itself in many ways - the monochrome, the hats as plot devices, the topical references to Castro, Cuba and the space programme - in other ways it feels a long way ahead of its time. The titular apartment itself seems a bit like a time-machined version of the apartment in Seinfeld, right down to the idea of people letting themselves in and complaining about what snacks he has. Our protagonist Bud Baxter is not dissimilar to Jerry either, struggling to find his proper place in the absurdity around him, even if the character flaws are different and the acting skills are in another league entirely. The script is pretty sharp and although the plot verges into predictability at times (Chekhov's mirror, Chekhov's playing cards, Chekhov's sleeping pill...), there are also entertaining takes on familiar New York tropes: the liquor bar, the Jewish doctor (and a great walk-on from his wife), the smoothy-chops executive.
The story is a play on the idea of people selling their soul to climb the greasy pole, but it manages to be quite inventive with some of the side characters - I particularly liked the bitter, devious secretary - and the elevator-girl love interest is also well fleshed out. Our friend Bud is a funny, honest depiction of an urban bachelor. He spends a lot of time making up excuses and tall tales to get him out of embarrassing situations which, on the face of it, are not his fault. However, ultimately everything really is his fault, and he has to do something about it in the resolution.
Verdict: I was never bored, and although intelligent, understated comedies like this were made for decades afterwards (and may even reappear in the Best Picture parade), it made me sad that the format seems in terminal decline today, never mind being in the running for Best Picture. There will be weightier tomes than this to come, but I enjoyed it, and I suppose given I had never heard of it (perhaps saying more about me than it), it counts as a pleasant surprise. It's a shame that films like this don't cast a greater shadow over the collective memory than they do the critical one, but I suppose that's just the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.
League Table
An inevitable early lead. I wonder how long it will hold on.
1 The Apartment