FERNANDO’s CORNER ~ Posted October 23rd, 2016
Well, I have just finished watching for the first time in my life a landmark film: Billy Wilder’s Academy Award~winning “THE APARTMENT” (1960) (United Artists). Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter ~ a “damn fool” as they call him in some moment of the film. Well not so much a damn fool because he’s lending his apartment to cheating men, with a purpose…he wants to get ahead in the big company he works for. In a way, he’s like Barbara Stanwyck’s character in “Baby Face” (1933); only he’s not sleeping his way to the top, but letting other men borrow his apartment to sleep and fool around with dames and cheat their wives in order to get ahead.
Human misery. Loneliness. Cheating. Flawed people, aren’t we all? Letting ourselves being used in that way…using other people. I’ve seen it all my life in the company I work for and in life in general, but thank God not me. I’m not like that. I’m a “human being”, a “mensch” just like C.C. Baxter in the end.
This bittersweet film is truly great. It’s very well acted all around with Jack Lemmon giving a superb performance. This is the kind film that should be revisited many times. A masterpiece.
( H O M E )
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