A vigorous and satirical critique of the materialistic hypocrisy usually associated with sexual promiscuity and marital infidelity. Most of the married men here are completely incapable of keeping their hands off women half their age and most of the girls delude themselves into thinking that they will divorce their wives for them. Also a solid satire on the regimentation and routinisation of office life.
As you would expect from Billy WILDER, the humor is sharp and witty and the satire focuses on the choices we all must make between love and career. Much of the comedy centers around a neighbor's belief that Jack LEMMON is sleeping with all and sundry when his apartment is actually being used by five of his senior office colleagues for their amorous trysts. His meteoric rise to the executive suite is purely the result of this sexual sub letting not any relevant business acumen on his part and he finds himself in love with one of the kept women which could upset the whole cosy arrangement. Deep down this is one of the finest romantic comedies ever made because it is grounded in solid monochrome reality rather than fantasy.
LEMMON is his usual nebbish self; while Shirley MacLAINE steals the show with a performance of great subtlety as the depressive elevator girl with a heart of gold. Fred MacMURRAY plays against type as her amoral, married lover.
Monday 21 September 2009
Apartment
(1960)
80%
Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
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Science:
Sleep of Reason:
The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.
(1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.
Humans & Aliens:
I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.
(circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.
Führerprinzip:
One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.
(1913-60), French-Algerian writer & philosopher. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt: New York: Vintage Books, (1984; page 182.)
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