The dork as romantic-comedy hero is considered to be a contemporary concept – honed by the likes of Tobey Maguire, Steve Carell and Adam Brody – but Jack Lemmon specialized in just such characters decades ago, particularly in The Apartment. A comedy about both romantic and corporate corruption, The Apartment stars Lemmon as C.C. Baxter, an earnest worker ant at a giant insurance company who can only get ahead by loaning out his nearby apartment as a love nest for his philandering superiors. Genial and funny, yet hopelessly the nicest guy in the room, Baxter falls for a smart and witty elevator operator named Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), only to discover she’s one of the other women his boss (Fred MacMurray) brings to his apartment. Director Billy Wilder keeps this moving as quickly as any farce while still maintaining an underlying sense of melancholy (one suicide is discussed; another is attempted). The sad irony is that, deep down, Baxter and Fran are good people who would make a great match – if only they could extricate themselves from the sleaziness they’ve become enmeshed in.
