Lists
- ranked 12 in Empire 500 Greatest Movies (2008)
- ranked 15 in WGA 101 Greatest Screenplays
- ranked 16 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time
- ranked 20 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs
- ranked 24 in BBC 100 Greatest American Films
- ranked 38 in TV Cream's Top 100 Films
- ranked 60 in Cinema Fusion Movie Bloggers' Top 100 Movies
- ranked 62 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions
- ranked 76 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- ranked 87 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (March 2006)
- ranked 88 in The IMDb Top 250
- ranked 88 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (August 2005)
- ranked 93 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
- one of 100 Of Edgar Wright's Favourite Comedies
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs Nominees
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies Nominees
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions Nominees
- one of Alliance of Women Film Journalists Top 100 Films
- one of BAFTA Best Film Winners
- one of Best Director Academy Award Winners
- one of Best Picture Academy Award Winners
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
- one of New York Film Critics Circle Best Film Winners
- one of The New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, 10th Anniversary Edition
The word "bathos" refers to the absurd juxtaposition of high and low, especially in the form of the unexpected descent from the former to the latter. It's the stunning mountain vista nestled in a snowglobe, or the whispered love poem that you realize too late is directed at a car or a dog or a sandwich.
If there's a word for the reverse, the sudden elevation from low to high, I'm not aware of it, though "sublime" may be appropriate. What do you call it when the trivial or vulgar is elevated by unexpected depth and beauty? Whatever the word, it's what makes The Apartment worth loving.
It starts like any other Wilder/Lemmon comedy (Irma la Douce, Some Like It Hot, etc.), with a fool in over his head. C. C. Baxter operates his apartment like a love hotel, offering it up every night for his superiors to rendezvous with their mistresses. They're all too happy to take advantage -- to comic effect -- to the point of forcing Baxter to sleep on a park bench.
But things change when the arrangement is extended to the Director of Personnel, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), and his lover Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the elevator girl that Baxter himself has been pursuing. A confusing love triangle seems like the perfect setup for screwball farce, so it's a profound shock when that isn't at all what happens.
Kubelik isn't the usual romantic-comedy girl; she belongs in a drama. She's too real. She doesn't respond to betrayal with amusing plots for revenge or reconciliation, she responds with hurt. She's better at melancholy than witty repartee. Kubelik brings tragedy to the film, the consequences of Sheldrake's philandering making for a terrible, awful contrast to Baxter's own petty, self-inflicted woes. When the comedy resumes, it has a nervous edge. It's darker.
The film is, perhaps, overly sentimental, occasionally cheap, and not entirely convincing. But it's brilliantly analytical of its own genre, the kind of comedy where nobody ever seems to get hurt. It's as though, at the end of Some Like It Hot, Osgood responded to "Daphne"'s revelation the way most real men would, with shock, rage, grief, denial, anything but blithe acceptance. It's remarkable.