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The Apartment (Collector's Edition) | 
 enlarge | Director: Billy Wilder
Actors: Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine, Fred Macmurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $10.04
You Save: $9.94 (50%)
New (39) Used (11) from $10.04
Rating:  136 reviews
Sales Rank: 4078
Format: Collector's Edition, Black & White, Dubbed, Subtitled
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 125
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: M110080
UPC: 883904100805
EAN: 0883904100805
ASIN: B0010AN7Z4
Theatrical Release Date: 1960
Release Date: February 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW, Factory Sealed items direct from the Studios. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. Quick International Airmail!
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Product Description
Winner* of five 1960 Academy Awards including Best Picture The Apartment is legendary writer/director Billy Wilder at his scathing satirical best and one of "the finest comedies Hollywood has turned out" (Newsweek). C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) knows the way to success in business... it's through the door of his apartment! By providing a perfect hide away for philandering bosses the ambitious young employee reaps a series of undeserved promotions. But when Bud lends the key to big boss J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) he not only advances his career but his own love life as well. For Sheldrake's mistress is the lovely Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) elevator girl and angel of Bud's dreams. Convinced that he is the only man for Fran Bud must make the most important executive decision of his career: lose the girl... or his job.System Requirements:Running Time: 125 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/ROMANTIC COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 883904100805 Manufacturer No: M110080
Amazon.com essential video
Romance at its most anti-romantic--that is the Billy Wilder stamp of genius, and this Best Picture Academy Award winner from 1960 is no exception. Set in a decidedly unsavory world of corporate climbing and philandering, the great filmmaker's trenchant, witty satire-melodrama takes the office politics of a corporation and plays them out in the apartment of lonely clerk C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon). By lending out his digs to the higher-ups for nightly extramarital flings with their secretaries, Baxter has managed to ascend the business ladder faster than even he imagined. The story turns even uglier, though, when Baxter's crush on the building's melancholy elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine) runs up against her long-standing affair with the big boss (a superbly smarmy Fred MacMurray). The situation comes to a head when she tries to commit suicide in Baxter's apartment. Not the happiest or cleanest of scenarios, and one that earned the famously caustic and cynically humored Wilder his share of outraged responses, but looking at it now, it is a funny, startlingly clear-eyed vision of urban emptiness and is unfailingly understanding of the crazy decisions our hearts sometimes make. Lemmon and MacLaine are ideally matched, and while everyone cites Wilder's Some Like It Hot closing line "Nobody's perfect" as his best, MacLaine's no-nonsense final words--"Shut up and deal"--are every bit as memorable. Wilder won three Oscars for The Apartment, for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay (cowritten with longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond). --Robert Abele
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| Customer Reviews: Read 131 more reviews...
 Great movie to watch anytime! July 10, 2008
The movie was great! It's funny to see the same nonsense that happens nowadays being portrayed years ago. The more things change they definitely stay the same!
ONE OF THE BEST SCREENPLAYS OF THE 60s June 24, 2008
Billy wilder was the first woody allen
and this movie shows it
the best comedy and drama with great performances and direction.
a treasure, no doubt about it
 Bworth in Boston June 9, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
This was one of the dullest movies I've ever watched! Other laudatory reviwes mystify me. Can this really be the same Billy Wilder who made " Some Like It Hot???"
 Very Poignant and Touching! Too Bad About the DVD! May 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Although this is billed as a comedy, it's only so in the sense that just as "Macbeth" was a tragedy and "Twelfth Night" was a comedy, this film is a comedy. What I mean is that over the years, the jokes are still amusing but not really funny anymore and in fact some of them are just downright corny e.g. the "you should see my backhand" line. Still, this film is very poignant and touching and really came to life for me towards the middle and end when it addresses the cruelty inflicted on women by men who just wanna have fun with no regard to the consequences.
Women are treated like chattel although you find some difficulty in finding sympathy for them when you realise that in some way, they brought it upon themselves. If women only respected other women and played on the same team, "men" like those portrayed here wouldn't even have a chance to use them so easily. If you don't want a homewrecker to come destroy your marriage just don't be one yourself! Imagine if all women stuck to this credo...
Anyways, both Lemmon and MacClaine put in very good performances here as the sympathetic man who realises just how bad his involvement in aiding and abetting his colleagues in cheating on their wives truly is after seeing the results on his victim MacClaine whom he really loves makes a selfless sacrifice of his own with regards his career to do the right thing and MacClaine as the "victim" who realises what true love is about. I thought I couldn't hate Fred MacMurray any more than when he was Neff in "Double Indemnity" but his acting is so good here that I actually found myself hating his character even more here although it goes without saying that "Double Indemnity" is the far, far better film.
This is a very good film except that this DVD version is very poor. The film hasn't been restored in any way and so the picture quality is poor with imperfections galore and the sound quality in Mono is also very poor. There are also no special features worth mentioning at all. Here's hoping that a Blu-ray version with full high quality restoration work on both picture and sound quality is on the horizon. Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround or better options would be nice as well as a frame-by-frame picture cleanup to do justice to a deserving best film Oscar winner.
Recommended but wait for a better restored version to surface.
 The Barrenness of Eight. May 27, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Several men kept an apartment for their daytime and nightly trysts and, sometimes, had to arrange ahead of time for the privacy they were paying for. This was a busy place day and night with appointments similar to Butterfield Eight where Elizabeth Taylor's character parlayed a long mink coat. The townhouse apartment was beautifullly furnished with good taste and expensive condiments. Not that they cooked. All of the essentials needed for good living was arranged for comfort and luxury.
Another such apartment existed, on just the opposite: no durable furnishings, just a palet on the floor and a t.v. set. This is an updated version but rent paid by the inhabitants of a halfway house, no chairs, dresser, or even curtains on the windows. Black plastic bags kept the outdoors hid and the pad is kept dark. The victim is lured into this trap with one of the robot's enthusiasm about cooking a meal for her. He supposedly worked in the kitchen of an expensive restaurant which takes in felons right out of prison for social workers,
He's not as young as he appears and his fingers have no finger nails. Using toys to make up for their deficiency, nothing works right. Long and floppy, it is frustration for the partner. That's just the beginning of weird abnormal behavior and known only the animal version which doesn't work. "Get on your knees" is not for an execution but an aboriginese approach. These men are demented. One got away but how many of the homeless were lured into damnation and didn't live to talk about it. A slight variation on an old theme.
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