The Apartment follows C.C. Baxter, a single insurance clerk eager to climb higher in a behemoth business. All the men from higher up live with their families in suburbia, miles from Manhattan. So, to maintain their extramarital adventures, they like to make use of Baxter’s apartment. And every day, like a bona fide secretary of adultery, Baxter is busy trying to figure out who has his key and where it should go to next, resulting in yet another night spent alone in the snow on a bench in Central Park.

Jack Lemmon plays Baxter as a walking paradox, an extreme hyperactive man who wants nothing more than rest, who seems to swap his own love life for that of his lying bosses. But, when he has another bad night’s sleep, the office elevator upstairs is operated by Fran Kubelik, a scarce bright spot he looks forward to every day. Kubelik is played with a darkly comic precision that will blow your socks off at the drop of a hat by Shirley MacLaine, who casually turns a sad moment into a chuckle with a witty quip: “You would think I should have learned by now. When you’re in love with a married man you shouldn’t wear mascara.”

Director-writer Wilder made it his trademark to use taboos to kick against the shins of censors (as we say in Dutch), and his Christmas film is no exception. With razor-sharp dialogue, this film balances between a Christmassy jolliness and a more serious undertone in which every sentence becomes a strange sort of triple-entendre. In fact, it’s exactly this strange mix of melancholic joy that I often experience myself around this time. And so every year I turn on The Apartment in anticipation of those phenomenal last words from the film: “Shut up and deal…” The ideal Christmas spirit. Happy days to all, holiday-wise!

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