The Apartment (1960)

Second viewing; first viewed between 1983 and 1986.

An insurance executive has been allowing his corporate superiors to use his apartment for erotic purposes on a regular basis; he expects promotions in return. Things complicate when he becomes interested in an employee who is having an affair with a company big shot.

The first hour is pretty good, I think. The remainder of the film is strictly predictable. It is hard to object to the film on a strictly intellectual basis, perhaps. But films should be stimulating and exciting from beginning to end, and this film ceases to be so at the middle, around which time it becomes a purely mechanical device. Another point which perhaps should be made more explicit by critics and commenters is that this is a tale of universal greed, meaning that all three parties (boss, underling, girl) suffer from excessive greed for most of the duration of the movie. The resolution comes from the realization by two of those parties that their greed was excessive.

Rating: 66 (unchanged)