The Apartment on Blu-ray

Director Billy Wilder's sophisticated sense of humor illuminated a dark view of humanity. Seldom were the results funnier—and sadder—than his Oscar-winning 1960 film The Apartment. The new Blu-ray reissue affords another opportunity to recall his brilliant satire of American corporate life. A young Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a clerk in a gigantic insurance company. Eager to climb the ladder to the executive suite, he will do almost anything to spur his advance, including loaning his Manhattan apartment to his suburban higher-ups as a trysting spot with the secretaries (they tell their wives they're “working late”). Fred MacMurray (who would go on to become the benevolent suburban dad in “My Three Sons”) plays Sheldrake, the coldest among the executives, with lordly disregard. Shirley MacLaine's vulnerable performance as Sheldrake's sex interest, Miss Kubelik, anchors The Apartment to tragedy. Younger audiences nowadays might see The Apartment as the template for “Mad Men.” In 1960, audiences viewed it with a shock of recognition.