12 days of not-so-Christmassy Christmas movies: ‘The Apartment’

“The Apartment” (1960) – C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) works extremely hard at the Consolidated Life New York City office.  He makes $94.70 per week and lives in a great apartment that costs $85 per month.

Most nights, he works late – for an hour or two –  but not to get ahead.  He just cannot go home to his apartment until around 8pm.  Why is that?

That’s the premise of Bill Wilder’s wildly successful rom-com that won five Oscars, including Best Picture!

Now, C.C. may have his eye on a promotion, but the other is on Fran (Shirley MacLaine), an elevator operator.

Will C.C. and Fran fall in love?   They might, but they also spend Christmas Eve and Day in C.C.’s apartment, but not for the reasons one might think.

The Academy nominated Lemmon and MacLaine for Best Actor and Actress Oscars in a film that really shows off his everyman persona (including C.C.’s curious reason to use a tennis racket in the kitchen) and her quick wit and girl-next-door charm.  C.C. and Fran are a couple of nice kids, but they are caught in a massively bureaucratic corporate environment, that is so stuffy, it may have directly influenced John Patrick Shanley’s “Joe Versus the Volcano” (1990).

(Available on Amazon Streaming and iTUNES)

⭐⭐⭐⭐ out of  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Image credits: United Artists; Clip credits: Movieclips

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