THE APARTMENT:
C.C. Baxter (played by Jack Lemmon) is known as a ladies man at his apartment building. Every day, sometimes a few times in one day, Mr. Baxter has women over to his place for some fun. At least that’s what he has made his neighbors come to think of him but truth is Mr. Baxter is lending out his apartment to some of his bosses at work so they can bring over some women they are seeing. While allowing his bosses to cheat on their wives at his apartment, Mr. Baxter quickly climbs up the corporate ladder going from just another of the many insurance reps to becoming the assistant director. Everything seems to be going by like normal until the director and boss of everyone J.D. Sheldrake (played by Fred MacMurray) gets ahold of the key to the apartment so he can take Fran Kubelik (played by Shirley MacLaine) to the apartment, Mr. Baxter finds out that the girl he has fallen in love with from the elevator at work is so in love with his cheating boss that she will take her life if she can’t have him.

SHUT UP AND DEAL:
When not reading the description of The Apartment I had no clue what the movie was going to be about. With the cover art showing the three main actors, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Lemmon, and Fred MacMurray with a keyhole shape around them I just figured it was going to be a comedy about an apartment with something going on between the three characters. However, I quickly found out that the movie was nothing like what I thought it was going to be about and in fact was a little surprised to find out that a film that came out in 1960 the topic was a little risqué. Once The Apartment had played for about 10 minutes I knew exactly what was going on and when they introduced Shirley MacLaine it was easy to see where the story was going to go.

The Apartment had this funny, a little sad, and serious plot going for it where it had me wanting everything to work out for the character Mr. Baxter. Jack Lemmon done a really good job making his character Mr. Baxter be this guy who is trying to keep his job by allowing his bosses to have affairs at his apartment while at the same time he is still knowingly helping his bosses have affairs. It’s actually Shirley MacLaine that steals the movie with her character Fran by making me want to feel bad for but at the same time I couldn’t fully like the character because she was knowingly having an affair. Though it did help that she is a good actress and looks amazing in this movie.

Though the plot of the film is good the only problem I had with the movie is that it’s a half hour too long. Around the first hour and twenty minutes I was ok with how the movie was flowing but by the hour and half mark I was getting a little distracted. Though the all scenes play parts in the plot development some could have been shortened. During the scene where Mr. Baxter is taking care of the sick Fran it could have been cut down to just showing quickly that he was doing so then moving on. By the time the movie was over with the ending, though took 2 hours to get to, it was over in 5 minutes. I still enjoyed the movie but with it being so long along with having a slower moment in the middle, it would be easy to get distracted with the movie.

BLACK AND WHITE ON BLU RAY:
This movie came out in 1960 so having it on Blu Ray was iffy for me at first. With the cover on the Blu Ray case and the photo on the back being in color I figured it wouldn’t look that great because most of these older films that are color don’t transfer over that well to Blu Ray. Luckily though The Apartment is in black and white allowing the picture quality to pretty good. At times I was able to spot some scratches in the picture but overlooked this because after all it is a movie that’s over 50 years old. Still, for such an old movie it looks really good on Blu Ray with some good audio levels. Being that it’s a film that was made in the times when it was carried by dialog with no musical score being played behind it, having good audio is a key element.