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@TK-421 Challenged me to write a post about The Apartment before Christmas. I'm not going to use spoiler tags because this movie is a classic from 1960. It's an IMDb Top 100, and I think it deserves to be there. Great film, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The last paragraph paints this film in a worse light then it probably deserves. It's even a Christmas movie if you want to squeeze it in.
The Summary: Baxter works at a huge insurance company in New York and to to accelerate Baxter’s career trajectory he lets junior executives and later Jeff a senior executive use his apartment to cheat on their wives.
I come from a Christian denomination that - in the not-so-distant past - banned going to movie theaters and all alcohol consumption. Watching this had me nodding my head, thinking I totally see why they felt that way about films like The Apartment. Released in 1960, it's black-and-white, so I think it comes off more risqué because I'm mentally bucketing it with '40s flicks, but Hollywood - always more progressive than the general populace - was already barreling toward the full-blown late '60s revolution. Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot came out the year before and is just as (and in light of current trans issues) even more norm breaking.
I’m no film historian, but if The Apartment wasn’t the first, it must have been very close to creating the template for the bawdy office Christmas party trope. It's all there (short of nudity) full on pre-HR debauchery with people getting hammered, hooking up wherever they can find space. I’m sure Mad Men borrowed heavily for it's office culture.
You can, of course, make the standard progressive culture-war points: powerful men exploiting female staff, systemic sexism, etc. But flip the lens a bit, and this film could almost have been written by a modern manosphere/red-piller.
Baxter is a cuck in almost every sense of the term. He literally crawls into the still-warm bed after the alphas finish their trysts. Even after he learns that Jeff (married father of two) has been carrying on a long-term affair with his love interest Fran Baxter keeps letting Jeff go at his one true love in the apartment. When Fran attempts suicide with sleeping pills, Baxter nurses her back to health, all while actively trying to keep Jeff and Fran together. This isn’t Fran’s first rodeo; her previous beau is in prison. Since it’s the 1960’s she not just in it for the sex, she actually falls suicidally in love with the bad boys, and she doesn’t have any kids. But Fran only turns to the nice guy after she’s been "run through".
P.S. And small culture war take it's interesting to think about how much technology replaced thousands of jobs represented in this film
Haha, I don't know if it was a challenge. You're absolutely right that The Apartment is a great movie. I had a whole plan for my review that would use a vigorous defense of office affairs as its spine. It's cool you did it even though it robs me of the mic. Yours was a better post than mine would have been anyway. I enjoyed it.
That's an interesting question. It does have a distinctly modern "this is a movie office Christmas party" feel. Office Christmas parties generally, however, are attested as far back as A Christmas Carol. My strong suspicion is that The Apartment may or may not have created some iconographic imagery that other films copied but the reason they all look the same is because they're depicting a (sometimes heightened depending on film) real thing. Office Christmas parties are the template for the office Christmas party trope generally and movie offices are often visually mid-century modern. I do miss a nice in office Christmas party. Any combination of the workplace and alcohol. It annihilated my first marriage and slammed multiple human lives into a brick wall. Still a good time.
Fascinating. I see what you're gesturing at, I do. And by any colloquial use of the term, sure, he's a cuck. I don't care about the feelings of a fictional character.
But I think by trying to map the character to the cuck archetype and Fran to the cock carousel aficionado you're making assumptions that are not supported by the text.
Take Fran - it's been a few days since I rewatched the movie but I count two men that she's definitely slept with: her jailbird husband and Sheldrake. That is: her husband and a man she's only still with because she's convinced he'll leave his wife and enter into a long term monogamous relationship with the expectation of marriage. Wholesome.
People in the office gossip about her once it's known she's been to The Apartment. That's gossip. It's part of the critique the movie is leveling at superior - subordinate shenanigans. Textually, she's no angel by having an affair with a married man but I'm pretty sure the film never states that she's done it before. Unlucky in love does not imply she's been raw dogging strangers in alleys. Her husband is in prison, she's emotionally devastated by the affair, and her first kiss was in a cemetery. That's plenty. As a Christian you're welcome to describe a woman sleeping with two men while in separate relationships with each as being "run through" if that's appropriate in your culture. It is not in mine.
Now for that little cuck Baxter. Yes, he's shown as being in a subordinate role. It's a load bearing part of the story. He literally is the subordinate of most of the men he's interacting with and the movie is about the relationship between subordinates and their betters (you filthy proles).
Hierarchies are real, were much stricter at the time, and are a major point of emphasis of the film. Baxter isn't a cuck because he goes to sleep in his used bed. He's tired, working his way up the ladder, and he's a Yes Man. There are benefits to that - it is explicitly stated he's doing it for advancement, not a psychosexual thrill as one would expect of the cuckold, and does in fact get his reward - but costs too. The movie is showing both sides. You do what you have to do to advance: then its your turn to drunkenly bang the young ladies in your subordinates apartment. Until he gets promoted and then he, etc.
Baxter is interested in Fran, absolutely. She stands him up for a quasi-date, fine. People went on a lot more lower stakes social activities back then - pornography distribution technology was primitive.
But Baxter is never shown to be in a romantic relationship with Fran. She is in actual love with Sheldrake. Who she is in a relationship with. (This point and her suicide attempt were going to be a big part of my analysis. Yes, yes, it's all good fun to partake of the office supplies. You should do your utmost to stick to the ones who absolutely know the score and want what they're going to get and you must not lead them on. None of that applies to Fran.) Sheldrake's trysts with Baxter might be a little insulting - he's into the lady, it's his apartment, blah blah blah. Not really the same as a random guy breaking your wife's back while you swallow sadness in the basement. Baxter is a Nice Guy. He's actually not really a cuck unless you extend his desire for Fran into actual possession without any say from her about it.
"Even after he learns that Jeff (married father of two) has been carrying on a long-term affair with his love interest Fran Baxter keeps letting Jeff go at his one true love in the apartment."
This statement is incorrect at its load bearing sections. Yes, Jeff is married and has kids. That doesn't enter into the cuck equation for Baxter. Yes, Fran is portrayed as Baxter's love interest. That does not give him a retroactive owner's pass to her vagina. If your problem is that he lets Sheldrake use the apartment to be with Fran I will be forced to point out that Baxter quits to prevent that very thing once he's both gained a spine and emotionally connected with Fran. When she really is his love interest and past the hormonal crush phase - exactly what do you think is attracting Baxter to her that's different than Sheldrake at first? Does that mean that Fran is also Sheldrake's "one true love"? - he acts like it. If Baxter's actually a cuck we're all getting cucked any time a woman we might hypothetically be interested in has sex with another person.
Good observation. An underrated aspect of watching old films is getting little glimpses of a world that was.
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