Reviews

I do not understand C. C. Baxter. And I don't believe character is credible. In Baxter, we are to believe there exists a man who obsequiously offers his bed and his tiny one-bedroom apartment to other men; to achieve their sexual gratification; those mere scavengers' who roam the "office jungle" where Baxter works. We are asked in "The Apartment" to accept Baxter, not as a junior executive or a back-office drone, but as the proverbial "deer-in-the-headlights" as "Bambi" road kill that he is; the food that scavengers survive upon.

But Baxter's energetic and enthusiastic prostitution of himself, of his being, of his honor; and his self-respect; before the very lowest levels of corporate power and authority; can only be viewed as a measure of his absolute and complete animation by a level of personal greed and ambition, that is almost incalculable.

In C. C. Baxter, the odor of obsequious, servile efficacy draws the attention of Alpha Male J. D. Sheldrake, who's always sniffing the underbrush for the scent of other Tier I predators (like himself) encroaching on his territory; be they full-grown Males; or like Baxter, a Tier I predator, in-the-making.

The screenplay doesn't reveal how, or when, Mr. Sheldrake becomes aware of Baxter or the means used to discern what is the actual use Sheldrake's bun-boys are making of their over-eager junior executive.

And it only adds to our perception and understanding of Sheldrake's power; as is typical in our bureaucratic civilization, Baxter is summoned by an anonymous phone call, which places him in audience with J. D. Sheldrake, who is; the corporation's Director of Administration & Personnel.

The screenplay does not credibly address how Baxter knows and then later supposedly doesn't know what Sheldrake wants. Or what, in advance, the price is for giving Sheldrake what he wishes. The plot's evolution through the Baxter character's internal evolution in understanding "the price of success" is both contrived and not believable.

Because Baxter can neither discover; nor make; who Sheldrake takes to "The Apartment" an issue; after, he has agreed to give Sheldrake the key to "The Apartment" in the first place. And; after Baxter has accepted, in exchange for that key; Sheldrake's keys to the Executive Suite and his (Baxter's) own private office.

There is nothing; for Baxter to subsequently "learn" from the course of events (in the plot), whatever they may be. Baxter has "known the score" for some time, in fact, since long before he answered that telephone; and took the elevator ride to his audience with power.

Baxter learned that score long before the elevator ride. Because he was taught it by those four "company men" with whom he was already freely sharing his bed, hoping it would result in his advancement. Baxter already knew sin when he had his audience with power and found that he enjoyed it.

Baxter can easily endure the petty slights and humiliations in the daily life of a white-collar corporate drone/enslaved person because he's living with the scent of eight people routinely making love in his bed; in "The Apartment." The smell of these women (and maybe the men, too) sustains him in this endurance. It allows him to vicariously participate in the exercise of lust, power, and the passion he seeks for himself.

And, until the day of, what? Reckoning, Judgment, grace; no. Until the day when he, having risen in line of succession to power himself, may command the scent of a woman to inhabit his bed, ex-officio; literally, from and through the authority of his office. Baxter's ambition is so great that he will endure anything to achieve that day.

This realization makes the subsequent episodes in the screenplay both irrelevant and false. There is no basis for Baxter to try and cover up how he's trying to climb up the corporate ladder to his neighbors and land-lady, except that he already knows what he's really up to and his real motivations. And those most assuredly need to be hidden because it's part of his cover-up, part of his strategy to keep secret (from everyone) his choice for power as a destination, and his chosen route to reach that destination. The screenplay also joins in this cover-up to keep this issue from the audience watching the film.

Baxter maintains the fiction that he is the "hard-working," "self-sacrificing" drone, with pure and untainted motives, to his corporate supervisors and peers. And separately, he maintains the fiction that he is the "can't-get-enough" lover (to "the Apartment's" neighbors) to cover-up up the truth of the path to power that he has chosen. And the screenplay covers this character's failure to grasp this foundational quantum of self-knowledge and the consequences of such knowledge.

The script does this because it has a larger "chick-flick" social narrative. That narrative depicts the "woman" as the defenseless, helpless "victim" of larger, more powerful, invincible, and evil forces (i.e., men, like Mr. J. D. Sheldrake). Forces that compel her to do the things that she does.

The screenplay portrays Baxter's motive for allowing his neighbors to conclude wrongly that he is a "swinger" because Baxter is ashamed of the fact that he's just one of the multitude of single, un-loved, lonely men who truly only want to be men like Mr. Sheldrake; living "happily" in the suburbs, with the baby-making wife, a mortgage, and a canceled commuter train ticket, to a comfortable retirement. It's a "ticket" that reads to the same destination that the "everywoman," Miss Kubalik, is also desperately seeking.

But that reasoning is false. That's not why Baxter is where he is or living as he is. As stated before, Baxter knows the score. He learned it the hard way, one bedmate at a time. He covers up with the fantasy of portraying himself as the "can't get enough" lover; to protect, sustain, and facilitate his real ambition. And if he sits down in front of his TV, with his thawed TV dinner, late at night, after his last "john" has caught the last commuter train for New Rochelle or Stamford, it's because it is the method he has chosen, to achieve the objectives he pursues, with all his might; and, without a single question of the value of those objectives; or, of how they are followed.

Baxter wants power for its own sake. He wants the day to come that he can live in the world as a J. D. Sheldrake to have the wife and kids in New Rochelle and the Fran Kubalik in the Village or Hoboken.

Wilder's genius in this screenplay; and his direction of the film is to create a characterization of both Baxter and Kubalik as the jilted lovers of the evil Sheldrake. In modern parlance, Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" work becomes a classic comedy, "chick-flick." In which the wronged innocent woman (Shirley McClain); (who happens to have knowingly been twice engaged in an adulterous affair with the married J. D Sheldrake) and the equally wronged and innocent corporate novice (Jack Lemon); are almost led to personal destruction by the dastardly villain (Fred McMurray). But just in time (in the film's last reel), fate secures true love, self-respect, and justice. But how; can that be?

Simple, the love that Fran kindles in Mr. Baxter causes C. C. to "discover" the new, old, authentic, dormant self within him. And that discovery, of course, leads (like the true love a good woman always does lead to) Baxter to take Ms. Kubalik from Mr. Sheldrake and for Baxter (with his honor truly restored) to quit the company (for an unspecified but strongly implied much happier ending of the film; and future for its two main characters).

Kubalik sees the strength and integrity of Baxter while she's recuperating from her suicide attempt in Baxter's apartment, and (because this is a chick-flick) she is allowed only to hint that she understands this new arrangement (after Baxter expresses his overwhelming love for Fran) by telling him to, "shut-up and deal" (the cards) for a game of bridge (which he had tried to get her to play with him when she was recuperating from the suicide attempt, a week or so earlier).

It's a perfect "chick-flick" ending. Where Shirley McClain and Jack Lemon can both portray female victims of male abuse; and overcome their victimhood through the "true love" they find together in each other (yes, the two women). The screenplay was a masterpiece; in both art and manipulation.

The unreality of the situation and the ending exists on multiple levels. First, there is the unresolved truth about how Fran and CC begin "their" relationship. Recall that Fran (unknown to Baxter) decided to return to Sheldrake and rejoin him in their well-practiced exercise in adultery. This was the trustworthy source of Baxter's promotion because; as a result of Sheldrake's need for a place to take his mistress, he decided to take over "The Apartment" from his office Bun-Boys; because of its ease of use by an executive from the Westchester County, NY suburbs, and his mistress from Hoboken. This preamble was unknown to Baxter and the Bun-boys, who all shared the everyday use of CC's apartment. But the person most in the dark about the future use of Fran and "The Apartment" was Baxter.

Make no mistake about Baxter's true ambition. He's not interested in living with Fran (or any other woman or man) in the cab driver's neighborhood of Fran's Brother-in-Law. But neither is Fran. When you're an elevator operator at the headquarters of a corporation. You know who Mr. J. D. Sheldrake is (his name and picture are in the main lobby of the headquarters building). You know he's married too. But like Baxter wants the big chair. Fran wants the big house in Westchester. And another in the film's long list of lies is the implication that both Fran and Baxter's newfound love has altered their hunger and incalculable ambition.

I don't believe the two principal characters are either plausible or credible in their alleged newfound relationships with one another.

That is how the besotted Howard Beale (Peter Finch, Network), chooses to characterize his alcoholic decline. He ignores the unglamorous reality that the real cause is his clinical depression, in the aftermath of his wife's death.

But by weighing in heavily on the scales is the fact that all of Beale's fellow characters in "Network," are in truth, just angry old men raging at the running down of their play clock. They're all in the last act of everything. And there will never be an overtime period. Or a call for an encore performance.

In R. J. I. Esq. Washington's character epitomizes this phony knight-errant impersonation. The flawed, now broken man, championing a cause that he wants us to believe he has fought for all of his professional life.

This film wants to take us in on this phony act too. R. J. I. Esquire wants us to only look at the courageous good that Israel does, in his speaking truth to power (be it, prosecutors or judges). And the film is quick to gloss over Israel's unlawful dismissal of an offer of a reduced sentence for his client. Without first putting the offer (and his recommendation) to his client to decide, based solely on his judgment.

Later in the film, Israel seems to indirectly sell out a client for a rather large sum of money. The retribution falls upon the client (then killed in LA's county jail). With his ill-gotten "blood money," Israel buys a set of new middle-aged leisure suits, jelly doughnuts, and strawberry-freezes. He tries to consume all at once while wading (ankle deep) in the surf of one of southern California's many beaches.

Israel has an obvious problem with youth, and his issues are amply demonstrated broadly across racial, ethnic, and age lines. The film wonderfully shows this when Israel gives a guest lecture to an evening class of college-age students. While they do respect him (as an antique, brought out from a glass museum case), he is uncomfortable with their questions. And in their not showing him deference that his age, actually no longer entitles him too. He is too old.

The quality of the film and the performance of Washington, and his supporting cast. Is that they reveal all of this to us. Roman J. Israel, con man; failed angry old man. Is displayed before us, from first frame to last. We cannot help to not see who he really is.

In a world of "TV" westerns with characters like: "Cisco", "Poncho", "Tonto"; and, the "Masked Man" (of course). Broadcast Westerns of the late 1950s; and, into the 1960s, attempted to attract adult audiences (after the "baby boomer" children (they were real children then) were put to bed).

This episode's subject matter and principal themes, are in line with this attempt. A woman (not kidnapped by a raiding band of Indians, on the "Warpath"), is sought after by her otherwise devoted husband, who can't understand why she's not just left him. She's run-off, with not one; but three (3) men; brothers, no less. All of whom promptly start killing one another; over her attentions.

After she helps amputate her husband's leg, she discovers that she loves him; a little late, but better than never. Needless to say he comes to his senses after his episode in frontier surgery, and decides to part ways from her on the trail. But it's still the 1950s, so this morality tale still punishes infidelity and lust.

I saw this as a DVD release earlier this month, and I think I've finally figured out the curious twist in the plot ending. Major Marco(Sanatra) deprograms Raymond Shaw when he, Marco, realizes how the playing cards are used to "activate" the "brain-washing" of Raymond. Raymond's mother, his "controller" doesn't realize this nor does she know that Raymond has been "deactivated" by Maj. Marco, when, she reveals to Raymond that not only is she a communist spy, and his controller, but also that he, Raymond is to be used in a murder plot of the Presidential nominee of the party where "Johnny" (Shaw's hated stepfather) is the Vice Presidential nominee. Shaw pretends to go along with the plot to the point of getting in place to do the murder, yet he kills his mother and stepfather. Its a stunning twist of plot.