Five Fun Facts About The Apartment (1960)
Billy Wilder’s 1960 film, The Apartment, remains as one of the greatest rom-coms of all time. It’s tender, heartfelt, and hilarious, featuring Jack Lemmon in one of his greatest performances. The film absolutely oozes pathos out of every pore, and while it’s not exclusively a “New Year’s” film, it does include a climax set on New Year’s Eve and is about finding the strength to start anew.
Given that COVID has laid waste to much of this year, we figure we could all use a little sweetness amidst the melancholia — and the prospect of a fresh start. To honor this 60-year-old gem, we’re raising our glass, tipping our hats, and dealing out five fun facts about the film and its production.
The concept of the film was inspired by real events and David Lean’s Brief Encounter.
Wilder originally came up with the concept for the film after watching David Lean’s 1945 film, Brief Encounter, which was authored by Noël Coward. Specifically, Wilder was left wondering about the predicament of a character who isn’t even seen in the film — the friend of Alec Harvey (played by Trevor Howard) who allows him to use his apartment for a romantic tryst with Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson).
Wilder and co-writer I. A. L. Diamond also partially based the film around an actual Hollywood scandal involving high-profile agent Jennings Lang and film producer Walter Wanger, who suspected that Lang was having an affair with his wife, actress Joan Bennett, whom Lang represented as an agent. Wanger hired a private eye to follow the pair, who found they were spending time together in New Orleans, the Caribbean, and Beverly Hills, where Lang was using an apartment owned by one of his friends, Jay Kanter, who was a low-level agent at a firm. Wanger tracked them down, and after a heated argument, he shot Lang in the groin. Lang would survive the shooting, and Wanger, pleading insanity, served four months in prison.
Diamond also based an element of the film’s plot around the experience of one of his friends who returned home after breaking up with his girlfriend to find that she had committed suicide in his bed…
The film’s iconic office shot was achieved with some interesting movie magic.
The film’s astonishing shot of the vast insurance firm office filled with employees laboring at their desk was actually created using forced perspective. Art director, Alexandre Trauner, and set decorator, Edward G. Boyle, used full-sized actors and desks in the foreground and used children dressed in suits sitting at tiny desks toward the rear. Further in the background, Trauner and Boyle had even smaller desks with cut-out figures of office workers that were held up by wires, which allowed them to be be moved, giving the shot extra depth and creating a seamless illusion.
Wilder required everyone to adhere to the script completely, except for Lemmon.
Wilder and Diamond are noted as not even allowing the slightest deviation to their material. Shirley MacLaine would frequently ad-lib lines, which drove Wilder and Diamond absolutely crazy. They were so strict, they even made her do the elevator scenes multiple times just because she missed one word.
The same expectation was pressed upon Lemmon as well; however, Wilder let go of the reins and allowed him to improvise in two scenes. In one scene, Lemmon hilariously squirts a bottle of nasal spray across a room, and in another he sings while straining spaghetti through a tennis racket.
For all Wilder and Diamond’s rigor, they even ad-libbed a bit themselves; the film’s famous last line was thought up on the spot by the pair while shooting the scene on set.
Bonus Fun Fact: Wilder would keep his film editor, Doane Harrison, on the set with him at all times as an associate producer, and he would never shoot a setup until they both discussed us. This was a clever move, as it allowed him to shoot sparingly, essentially cutting the film in the camera, which eliminated costly setups that might never be included in the finished product.
It was the last black and white film to win Best Picture for 51 years.
That’s right, it was 51 years before another completely black and white film would win Best Picture, and that film was The Artist (2011). If you want to be a stickler, technically, Shindler’s List, which won Best Picture in 1993, is black and white; however, it uses some scenes with color (namely, the notorious girl in the red coat and the candle burning at the beginning of the film).
Additionally, it’s the first Best Picture Oscar winner to explicitly reference to previous winners. Lemmon’s Bud Baxter attempts to watch Grand Hotel (1932) on television but is delayed because of commercials. Bud’s boss makes a comment about Bud and Fran having “a lost weekend,” which is a direct reference to Wilder’s previous Oscar winner The Lost Weekend.
Bonus Fun Fact: It was also the only Best Picture nominee that year to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
The film was praised by the Soviet Bloc.
Critics from the Soviet Bloc (or Eastern Bloc), the communist nations closely allied with the Soviet Union (including Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania), viewed the film as an indictment of the American system, claiming that it was a story that could only have taken place in a capitalist city like New York.
At a dinner in East Berlin honoring Billy Wilder, Wilder said the movie “could happen anywhere, in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Rome, Paris, London." He went on to say that the one place the film could not have happened in was Moscow, which received a thunderous round of applause and cheers from the East Germans. However, this ovation suddenly died when Wilder continued: "The reason this picture could not have taken place in Moscow is that in Moscow nobody has his own apartment."
This remark was met with grim silence, which is hilarious in hindsight, but presumably made for an awkward dinner.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!