Top 10 comedy films –
an alternative list
No. 9 – The Apartment
Only a few of the films on this list have the sole purpose
of making audiences laugh. Most have some other aim, be it social, political or
artistic (in the sense of stretching the boundaries of what comedies are
capable). Of those with a social message
of some kind, The Apartment is arguably
the best thought out and most perfectly pitched.
The main plot is the love story between office drone C.C.
Baxter (Jack Lemmon) and Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), an elevator girl at
the building where he works. Baxter’s rival is Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray),
an overbearing personnel manager with
the power to transform Baxter into an executive or dispatch him back to the
drudgery from whence he came. This fact indicates the social critique the film
develops, as does the use of Baxter’s eponymous dwelling by Sheldrake and other
senior members of staff. This critique isn’t politically sophisticated, but few
other films have so acutely tuned the epic themes of self-knowledge and rebellion
against the social order to the minutiae of modern life. Any of us who have ever
worked in an office (or lived in an apartment) can identify with Baxter as he
juggles romance and his career and more generally tries to find some nobility
in his subservient place in society. There’s no overt comment on the distorting
effects of this society, but it’s hard not to read it between the lines as
Baxter bends his life to accommodate those more powerful than him.
Billy Wilder is one of two directors whose work is more or
less mandatory in a list like this.[i]
There is no doubt that Some Like it Hot
is a funnier all-out comedy than The
Apartment, but arguably the latter has been more influential. This is partly
because of its subject-matter, and partly because Wilder succeeded in coaxing dramatic
themes into lightly played comedy. This bittersweet tone has been the template
for any number of modern blends of comedy and drama.
That’s a beautifully chosen (and delivered) ‘fruitcake’. What
might have been a corny, overplayed joke (‘She sends me a cake every Christmas’
‘What kind?’ ‘A fruitcake’) is undercut, a word slipped into the middle of a line
thrown away at the end of Lemmon’s monologue. It's poignant, and funny because of what Baxter's infatuation has become, and because he realises it. That mixture of something genuinely touching with a character's awareness of its absurdity is the gift The Apartment has given subsequent comedies.
[i] No
prize for guessing who the other one is. (There’s a good case to be made for
Alexander Mackendrick, but – spoiler alert – I have decided not to
include any of his films.)
