This is possibly the oldest english movie i've ever seen. Except for Shirley Mclaine, whose name i've come across in couple of novels as some reference, none of the other cast are even vaguely familiar. Billy wilder, the director, name does ring a bell, but again quite sure not because of this movies and mostly from any reference on articles or posts about some movie. How i ended up watching this movie is all thanks to an interview by a tamil director who was mentioning "It's a mad mad mad mad world" as his favorite comedy movie and luckily it was available on Prime. Even within the first few scenes it became quite familiar for the number of times the movie has been plagiarized, remade officially, scenes lifted left right and center across all possible languages. While looking at similar movies, ended up with "Apartment".
Again, within first few scenes, i was drawn to it because of a favorite hindi movie of mine "Life in a metro". The director has literally fitted the entire story line of apartment as one of his anthology story in that hindi movie. I still wonder how he managed to lift almost every major scene from a movie running over 2 hours and packaged it neatly to fit as an anthology along with other stories and characters!! The story for its time, 1960, might've raised eye brows i guess!! The hero, literally pimps his apartment to superiors in his office and there by gains promotion and fast tracks his career. He falls for the lady lift operator and the twist being, the big boss of the company is already having an affair with that lady. How it all unravels and eventually with the lead pair expressing their love for each other in possibly the top ten iconic dialogues of hollywood marks the end. All this while i've heard of "Shut up and deal" across so many movies and books but never knew it was from this movie!!
The other fascinating aspect about the movie was, it was literally like time travel to the past. The sheer number of people who were employed before computers took over is staggering!! The kind of time pass items they enjoyed at that time and how they lived their life before gadgets took over was quite interesting to watch. The hero reminded of TR Ramachandran (i am big time fan of his for his Sabapathy) in some ways. Heroine nu naamala purinjikanum pola. Till half way into the movie was wondering who was the leading lady!! The story, had it been made in tamil, would've been milked for melodrama in every possible way in the second half. But this one seems rather straight forward. In fact i felt it was too bland even for situations that deserved a bit of emotion. May be it all sums up her response in the end - "Shut up and deal"!!!
Note: Eager to hear Thala's view on this movie :D
Comments
The lack of melodrama was typical of Hollywood movies of that time. In fact of life in general. Things were much more understated than Over the Top. If you wanted an ocean of tears, you went to a Sivaji Ganesan movie :)
By the way, you are now in serious danger from Amazon Prime's algorithm. Instead of suggesting movies such as Rail or Monica: oru AI story, you will be offered Susent Boulevard, Cinderella , Father of the Bride and the like :):)