Billy Wilder may be my favorite director - one of the few where I will absolutely watch anything by him (Hitchcock is another), so it's a little surprising that we haven't watched this before now, as it is often regarded as Wilder's masterpiece. In fact, both Jami and I thought we'd seen it before, but realized as we watched it that we hadn't. I had a definite memory of it being a bit depressing and somewhat tawdry (I think I thought that Shirley MacLaine's character was a prostitute, and while there is a scene where she argues that she is effectively being treated like one (Fred MacMurray's odious Sheldrake couldn't think of anything to buy her for Christmas, so gives her $100) she certainly is not (apart from anything, her pugnacious cab-driving brother in law would never allow it). Of course, there is a scene of a suicide attempt, but if you allow for that, and actually a lot of scenes of people who are lonely and desperate, it's a surprisingly light-hearted romp! And of course Wilder brings Weimar-era sophistication to his screenplay that gives it a serious undercurrent that raises it several notches above even the best Doris Day froth of the day.
Anyway, the film, despite being two hours long, wastes no time with set up and throws you in with the premise (that Jack Lemmon (superb, as always, and just off the previous Billy Wilder film, the glorious Some Like It Hot (perhaps to exorcise some of the frustrations of working with Marilyn on that one, Wilder has a not-especially attractive character described as being "just like" Monroe, who does a very funny impersonation of her voice))'s C.C. "Bud/Buddy Boy" Baxter has been essentially dragooned by higher-ups at his massive corporation into loaning out his apartment for several evenings a week for them to conduct trysts in) without showing you how this came to be (this is briefly re-capped by Baxter when an even higher up (the afore-mentioned Sheldrake) gets suspicious). The initial scenes of Baxter toiling at his desk call to mind Tati's Playtime,
as visual tricks are employed to make the desks and workers vanish into the distance. (In a voiceover as we look at the still-impressive mammoth building that houses his insurance company, Baxter announces that the workforce of the company is equivalent to the entire population of Natchez, Mississippi, and the film is a reminder of just how many jobs have been mechanized or computerized away in the intervening years (pretty soon all of them), starting with Shirley MacLaine's Fran Kubelik's job of elevator operator.
While Baxter is put out (both literally and figuratively) by his bosses using his apartment, it leads to two major promotions in quick succession (one as a result of recommendations by the already-established four apartment exploiters, Dobisch (played by Ray Walston, Spiccoli's teacher in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, among a million other things), Kirkeby, Vanderhoff and Eichelberger;
and the other once Sheldrake gets his paws on the key (after which the others are squeezed out, to Baxter's relief and their chagrin). At the same time, Baxter is sweet on Fran, little knowing that she's in a currently off-again relationship with Sheldrake because he won't leave his wife (and two young sons, whom we later meet when we see him playing with them and their toys on Christmas day (and one young son startles him by knowing the meaning of "propagate")). So at one point Fran is having an assignation with Sheldrake at Baxter's apartment, not knowing it's his apartment, while he is waiting for her to show up at the Broadway show The Music Man, for which Sheldrake has given him tickets so that he's out of his apartment, so he, Sheldrake can meet Fran there. The way Baxter finds out exactly who it is that Sheldrake is meeting is very cleverly done: he finds a compact with a broken mirror inside in his apartment and gives it to Sheldrake who says that yes, it's his girlfriend's, and that she threw it at him. Then later, he is showing off a new bowler hat that he's bought (to go with his swank new office) to Fran and asks her how he looks and she gives him her compact so that he can use the mirror. Of course Lemmon is masterful in showing his realization on his face
and it's a very poignant moment, especially when he asks Fran why the mirror is broken and she says she likes it like that because she can see herself as she really is. This is foreshadowing for the suicide attempt, which happens in Baxter's apartment on Christmas eve, after Sheldrake's secretary, Miss Olson (Edie Adams, Sid Caesar's wife in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, in horn rimmed "Far Side" glasses) gets drunk at the Christmas Party and tells her in great detail how many women (including herself) Sheldrake has used the "I'm just about to divorce my wife" line on (ironically, she is the one to make it come true, after Sheldrake fires her for her indiscretion and her revenge is to give the same information to Mrs. Sheldrake). Fran confronts Sheldrake
at the apartment and he tries to mollify her with his "present" of $100 (after she's given him an album of the music of the piano player at the club they always meet up, showing the different amount of thought each puts into the relationship). Meanwhile Baxter is out getting hammered at a bar, where he is picked up by the hilarious wife of a jockey who is imprisoned in Cuba (Mrs. Margie MacDougall, played to perfection by Hope Holiday, who was known for her "scratchy Brooklynese tones" [thank you IMDb]). When they return to Baxer's apartment and he finds Fran limp with an empty bottle of sleeping pills next to her, Baxter has to throw her out, whereupon she yells indignantly that when she tells her husband he'll be so mad at how Baxter treated her. (As you can tell, a strength of this film, as in all Wilder's comedies, is the bewildering profusion of amazing comic bit parts.) Baxter enlists the help of the kindly middle-aged doctor and his wife (both of whom sound strongly as if they are German Jewish) who disapprove strongly of him because they have become convinced that he has a different girl every night and see the huge quantities of used liquor bottles he leaves in the trash (so that Dr. Dreyfuss insists that Baxter promise to leave his body to science). The scene where Dreyfuss tends to Fran post-stomach-pumping involves lots of very convincing face slaps.
Anyway, Baxter stays home and tends to Fran for the next 48 hours,
as Dreyfuss proscribes, or at least, he almost manages it, because the aforementioned pugnacious brother-in-law
tracks her down by going to the company and having Baxter ratted out by the still-sore Dobisch (who is the one who calls him Buddy Boy). He comes and gets Fran to take home to the house she lives in with her sister, but not before giving Baxter a shiner. Baxter is still happy, though, because he thinks he's in with Fran, and prepares a speech for Sheldrake where he says that he will take Fran off his hands (they have communicated over Christmas about the suicide attempt and Baxter has had to pretend to Fran that Sheldrake is more concerned than he was). However, at the meeting with Sheldrake, Sheldrake gives him the same speech, because he has left his wife and kids and now no longer needs to hide (although he admits he won't commit because he intends to exploit bachelorhood fully). And Fran seems ready to believe him this time. Will C.C.'s heart be broken? Will his new job as Sheldrake's personal assistant, with adjoining office be enough compensation? How has all of this happened in the week between Christmas and New Year's (the film ends in the wee small hours of the new year)? Watch it and see - it truly is one of Wilder's best, which makes it one of Cinema's best. (Shockingly modern: it alludes to so many themes that you are amazed to see touched on in an film made 65 years ago, which Wilder manages by being so subtle and witty. (If David Lynch had made it people would say that only he could see behind the veneer of civilization to the dark underbelly of modern society and expose the rotten hearts of men. And Wilder manages to do that and make it funny!) The suicide attempt alone would require a trigger warning if it were in a Netflix show of today.) Of course, you've already seen it - God knows how I managed not to all these years. Now I need to go and study the rules of Gin Rummy.
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