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The Apartment

Oscar™ Best Picture - Winning Movies

The Apartment

1960

Billy Wilder

Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston ...

8.4

82,414

Comedy. Romance. Drama C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is an office clerk who curries favor with the executives in his office by giving them the key to his small apartment for the odd afternoon dalliance. Among them is his callous boss, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who Baxter eventually learns is using his place to sleep with Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the sweet elevator operator the clerk has loved from afar. When Sheldrake coldly dumps the vulnerable ... [+]

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Wally Hammond Time Out	"Directed by Wilder with attention to detail and emotional reticence that belie its inherent darkness and melodramatic core, it's lifted considerably by the performances (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Bosley Crowther The New York Times	"A gleeful, tender and even sentimental film"	POS
United States	Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times	"In many movies, the characters hardly even seem to have jobs, but in “The Apartment” they have to be reminded that they have anything else (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of four)"	POS
United Kingdom	Simon Braund Empire	"Delightful comedy romance with a clutch of note-perfect performances (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Variety	"Billy Wilder has furnished 'The Apartment' with a one-hook plot that comes out high in comedy, wide in warmth and long in running time."	POS
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"A big-city satire with a romantic heart of gold (...) it's still luminous (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Kim Newman Empire	"Absolutely brilliant. Its funnier, sadder and cooler on the big screen (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	David Gritten Telegraph	"What’s most striking about the film is how perfectly it now chimes with modern preoccupations."	POS
United Kingdom	George Perry BBC	"The humanity of the film resides in the sweet interplay between Lemmon and MacLaine, and the development of their relationship (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	New York Daily News	"Production and direction wise, Wilder sustains his usual excellence. But his story is controversial (...) He oversteps the bounds of good taste."	NEU
United States	James Berardinelli ReelViews	"'The Apartment' represents Wilder at his most complete -seamlessly weaving the lighthearted and the serious without encountering a snarl or tangle (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Entertainment Weekly	"It’s easy to admire the director’s precision in blending drama and comedy. Altogether, a very satisfying experience"	POS
United States	Ruthe Stein SFGATE	"Lemmon and MacLaine are magical together, and MacMurray more than holds his own as the third part of the triangle"	POS
United States	Jake Cole Slant	"The tone differs from both those darkly moral movies and the filmmaker’s farces, finding a middle ground of somber tragedy that undercuts the awkward comedy of manners between the characters (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Marjorie Baumgarten Austin Chronicle	"This essential Billy Wilder film smoothly combines trenchant social observation with hilarious comedy"	POS
United States	James Powers The Hollywood Reporter	"'The Apartment' is an important and provocative film"	POS

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