In this blog post, we will examine how Billy Wilder’s film ‘The Apartment’ portrays love, loneliness, and the fragile state of modern individuals caught in the repetitive grind of daily life.
‘The Apartment’ is a romantic comedy depicting the journey of underdogs overcoming adversity and growing through their struggles. I believe Billy Wilder intended this work to show how the underdog triumphs over reality. This is because, in my view, Wilder’s signature approach has always been to stand with the underdog and drive the narrative from their perspective, an attitude consistently evident in this film as well.
First, let’s outline the basic plot of ‘The Apartment’. Bud (Jack Lemmon) is a timid but diligent office worker in New York. Living alone, he rents out his quiet downtown apartment to his company’s executives. This causes him constant minor and major disruptions to his daily life. But being naturally timid and facing individuals who wield considerable influence within the company, he repeatedly gives in to their persuasion and threats, handing over his apartment while bottling up his resentment.
Meanwhile, Bud has quietly developed feelings for Fran (Shirley MacLaine), an elevator operator, and is cautiously building a friendship with her. Thanks to the collective support of the executives renting his apartment, he becomes a candidate for promotion and meets Executive Vice President Sheldrake, who holds the hiring authority. Sheldrake already knows all of Bird’s secrets and uses this as leverage, demanding to rent a room himself. Bird uses the musical tickets he received as payment for renting out his room to ask Fran out on a date, but she stands him up. Later, at the company Christmas party, they get a chance to reconcile. However, seeing through a broken mirror that the woman Sheldrake brings to his apartment is none other than Fran, Bird is forced to distance himself from her once again. Meanwhile, heartbroken by Sheldrake’s schemes, Fran takes an overdose in Bird’s apartment on Christmas Eve in a suicide attempt. Bird, returning home just then, discovers her and saves her life. Because of this incident, Bird faces all kinds of misunderstandings and resentment from his neighbors. Yet, he bears all the insults alone for Sheldrake and Fran, and in the process, realizes he truly loves Fran.
On his first morning at the company, Bud tries to tell Executive Director Sheldrake, who is about to break up with Fran, about this truth. Coincidentally, that very morning, the executive director had already been kicked out by his wife after his affair with Fran was exposed at home. Having given up on Fran once more, Bird refuses Sheldrake’s request to rent an apartment to spend New Year’s Eve with her and ultimately quits his job. Returning home, Bird begins packing without any concrete plan. Hearing this story from Sheldrake, Fran realizes who truly loves her and rushes to Bird. The two spend New Year’s Eve together, quietly playing cards.
Thus, in the film, Bird appears at first glance like a servile office worker who gets promoted by handing over his house keys to his boss. Yet he is portrayed as a warm-hearted ‘underdog’ with a good soul. His situation is a story that could easily happen to someone in real life. Even if it’s not literally handing over a house, people sacrificing themselves to bribe their superiors for promotions—clearly, Jack Lemmon’s role as Bud is the story of an underdog that could be happening somewhere in reality.
Elevator Girl Fran’s situation feels much more directly applicable to reality. She failed a typing test and became an elevator girl, while simultaneously being Sheldrake’s illicit mistress. People struggling with unemployment, those forced to work jobs they didn’t choose, and the surprisingly common occurrence of extramarital affairs – we can find examples of these all around us today.
The executive bosses who frequent Bird’s establishment can be interpreted, whether in reality or by analogy to the world outside the film, as selfish power-holders exploiting the weak. They use Bird for their own amusement, unconcerned whether he catches a cold or not, and routinely threaten him with the promise of promotion. Their attitude reveals a belief that they hold hegemony, allowing them to freely exploit those relatively weaker. Therefore, considering the characters’ situations and how they navigate them, Billy Wilder consistently advocates for the weak and critiques the powerful in this film. What’s interesting is that regardless of whether they’re strong or weak, all the characters possess their own flaws—their weaknesses.
For instance, Bird’s weaknesses are his overly kind heart, his desire for promotion, and his feelings for the woman he loves. Fran’s weakness is her feelings for her lover, Sheldrake, itself. Sheldrake’s weakness is the fact he is cheating, and yet he has a family he must protect. I believe this aspect of Sheldrake’s character can also be applied to the many executives who borrowed Bird’s key.
Bird hands over the key for the sake of promotion, endures all manner of hardship because of it, yet due to his kind heart, he supports Fran to the very end. He even takes the blame himself to protect his boss and Fran. Knowing Fran loves Sheldrake, he deliberately lies to spare her hurt. Out of genuine care and affection for her, Bird ultimately quits his job, abandoning the promotion he worked so hard to achieve. This choice feels all the more dramatic when you consider how painstakingly he climbed the career ladder. This attitude is also characteristic of a figure embodying Billy Wilder’s signature deep pathos. Bird is even someone who keeps a pistol in his home.
Fran decides to die because of Sheldrake. This is a fatal weakness revealed by the heroine, whom we thought was only strong and determined. It seems a woman becomes infinitely weak in the face of love. Even knowing Sheldrake is slowly consuming her and that the relationship can never end well, Fran cannot let him go. Ultimately, she resolves to die. Perhaps she felt running away was easier than forgetting. She loves him each time, only to be crushed by betrayal, even knowing he will never divorce his wife. This is precisely the point where the sentiment often discussed in reality—“When others do it, it’s adultery; when I do it, it’s romance”—is most dramatically revealed. In Sheldrake and Fran’s affair, I read Fran’s heart, which feared her own hurt above all else, more than worrying about a family being destroyed.
The weakness of the strong lies in the act of cheating itself—the dishonesty—and in the agonizing situation they find themselves in, where they must pour all their energy into maintaining their dignity as heads of households.
I believe the common purpose behind these weaknesses is ultimately ‘love’. Though love takes different forms, their primary concern is clearly love. From blind love, physical love, to love that genuinely cares for the other, everyone struggles in their own way for their version of love. They flounder desperately to achieve their goals, sometimes hurting each other, yet this film confirms that people live by loving.
This film features relatively little spatial movement. Most scenes unfold within apartments and office spaces, with other locations like bars or streets being easily recognizable places around us, giving it a realistic feel, as if it could be happening right next door. The cinematography primarily uses angles that seem to view the world from a human perspective, lending a sense of stability. Even when viewed today, its understated, classic mise-en-scène is impressive. True to his status as a master of the noir genre that defined an era, Billy Wilder employs sharp chiaroscuro in this work and subtly weaves social criticism throughout the direction. Take, for instance, the scene where countless office workers sit at endless rows of desks, typing mechanically. Among them is the diminutive figure of Bud, appearing like a mere cog. I interpreted this scene as a visual representation of human alienation, or the modern individual reduced to a mere machine part. The tediously repetitive TV commercials seem to criticize modern society’s people trapped on a hamster wheel, those who’ve lost their agency and “think as they live,” provoking a pang of recognition in the viewer. Bird boldly turns off the TV and breaks free from that hamster wheel. Though not shown in the film, somewhere in the same world, another person will be holding their evening groceries and watching that commercial to the end. Bird is different from those people. He possessed the potential to quit the company from the very beginning. I believe Billy Wilder deliberately placed scenes like this to encourage those living on the hamster wheel.
This film possesses immense charm. Among its many appealing elements, the dialogue stands out. Billy Wilder’s films rarely feature lines that explicitly state the theme. He employs the art of subtle innuendo, slipping themes into dialogue before the audience fully notices, much like hiding finely chopped cucumbers in a sandwich for a child who dislikes them. Yet he delivers ample laughter and profound emotion simultaneously. His films carry a distinctive pathos even within the dialogue. The line that remains most vividly etched in my memory is the one Fran delivers to Sheldrake: “You shouldn’t wear mascara when you’re seeing a married man.” Uttered in the moment she’s desperately trying to cut ties with the indecisive, irresponsible Sheldrake, this line is a poignant confession, wrapping her anguish in the guise of a joke. As Fran says it, tears stream down her face, and through this wry line, we fully grasp her anguish. Her pain and sorrow strike far deeper than the cliché “I hurt because I love you,” making the viewer’s heart sink. Though it carries the meaning “Don’t wear mascara because tears will smudge it,” it was a far sharper and more concrete phrase than the abstract, subjective, and all-too-common expression “I’m hurting.”
Furthermore, this film also creates twists through dialogue. In the third act, when Sheldrake demands the key again, Bird strongly resists. Faced with Sheldrake’s veiled threats disguised as advice, Bird seems defeated once more and hands over the key. At that moment, I thought, “Bird has compromised with reality again,” and felt a bit disappointed. But then, through dialogue, we learn the key is for the company restroom, and seeing Bird step forward with unprecedented resolve brings a sense of satisfaction. The twist and catharsis are both contained within his lines. Ultimately, Sheldrake and Fran, unable to go to Bird’s apartment, meet at their usual bar. There, Fran realizes Bird’s true feelings and rushes to his place. Suddenly, a gunshot rings out from Bird’s apartment. Startled, Fran is thrown into a panic. The audience feels a ‘suspense of error’ in this moment. Audiences who previously saw the story of Bird attempting suicide after a breakup but accidentally shooting his knee, and the scene where he packs his belongings while the gun is still in the house, would have hastily concluded, based on the schema they formed about his life from the film, that “he committed suicide.” Fortunately, however, it was the sound of champagne popping. It’s a scene that makes the audience believe they know the film quite well, then flips that belief and hits them in the back of the head. I think it’s a truly ingenious device.
Watching the film while paying attention to the director’s intentions, character development, and detailed mise-en-scène—things I hadn’t paid much attention to before—revealed so much that was new. First, it’s impressive how this film, set in its own era, offers a glimpse into today. Time may pass, but human nature remains unchanged. Even today, people easily become slaves to materialism, trapped in a hamster wheel they refuse to escape. They hurt others for their own gain and pleasure. The strong exploit the weak. Yet, despite all this, people still live with love and embrace each other’s wounds. Just as it was before, the world will remain a place that allows the phrase, “Despite everything, it’s still worth living.” Even amidst rampant envy, jealousy, and selfish desires, as long as love endures, the weak can overcome together. I felt that Billy Wilder, who always champions the underdog, sought to convey a message transcending simple moral lessons of reward and punishment—a victory born of humanism and the will to love.
Thanks to Billy Wilder’s signature wit, as smooth as chocolate, the film paints a bitter reality yet ends on a sweet note. If I must find one point of regret, it’s that the downfall of the powerful is depicted more weakly than expected. Of course, had he chosen an ending where the powerful inevitably met ruin, it might have risked becoming trite. But with Billy Wilder’s sharp sensibility, I can’t help but wonder if he could have expressed the fall of the powerful more effectively. Honestly, I wanted to see Sheldrake completely ruined. And the thought that Bud will be remembered by the doctor next door as a womanizer is truly disappointing and regrettable. I know rationally that there’s no one to clear up the misunderstanding, that it’s more realistic for things to stay as they are, and that knowing or not knowing makes little difference to the overall outcome. But it’s also true that I find it heartbreaking that my beloved Bird remains trapped in that misunderstanding. Was there truly no best, most natural way to resolve it? This is a question I’d like to ask Billy Wilder himself.
Watching this film, I imagined whether I, if I were Bud, could willingly take a punch for Fran, or boldly quit a job where I’d been rapidly promoted. But somehow, I think I’d hesitate greatly and ultimately fail to do so. Because I’m just one of the countless people who’ve lived their lives conforming to reality. While watching this film, there were definitely moments when I felt a little embarrassed or stung by my own reflection. But the film pointed out exactly why I felt that embarrassment and also showed how to overcome it—it was a truly good work. From this film, I gained the lesson that I want to live like Bud, embodying Camus’s words: “a true rebel who acts with integrity and conviction in his actions, and who can say ‘no’ with conviction when everyone else succumbs to injustice.”
