"when you're in love with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara."

and that's just one of the fabulous lines from "the apartment"; no no, not the freaky french film with vincent cassel, which i nevertheless enjoyed, but the 1960 billy wilder gem starring shirley mclaine and jack lemmon. i've meant to see this for ever so long -- i had an ex who had the poster in his apartment, and my mom always talked about it as something that she and my dad liked. so, happy birthday daddy.

poor pathetic jack lemmon (is it just me, or does he have an air of camp that he just can't seem to shake?) is bud, who works as an insurance drone. he's hoping to move up though, and gets himself on the fast track by renting out his apartment (85 dollars a month in manhattan!) to various higher-ups in the company for quick indiscretions. apparently all of the top insurance men in the 50s ran around on their wives. kind of magnifies ones loneliness when you have to wait in the rain for someone to finish having sex in YOUR apartment. and you have to clean up, too. he's a bit of a pushover. it becomes apparent that the object of his affections is one fran kubelik, sassy elevator girl in his office building. i think i would have liked to be a sassy elevator girl, actually, especially in an era when men in suits would make quips like "would i like to get her on a slow elevator to china!"

everything seems to be moving sweetly, if slowly, in bud's favor, until it turns out that fran was actually AT bud's apartment with a certain mr. sheldrake from personnel, the very night that she was supposed to be at 'the music man' with bud, with tickets given to him as a bribe BY mr. sheldrake. how sad to be stood up at 'the music man'. but yes, mr. sheldrake is played by fred macmurray -- macmurray and lemmon...not much of a choice with the two of them. sheldrake is an absolute cad, actually giving fran a hundred dollars as a christmas present. and this is where things take a surprising turn -- fran attempts suicide in bud's apartment. after the initial scare and a visit from the doctor next door (who's annoyed at what he thinks is bud's caddish behavior -- "buy now, pay later, diner's club!"), the whole thing is sort of glossed over -- no ambulance, no one refers her to a therapist. her patheticness starts to match bud's, with great lines like "i wonder how long it takes to get someone you're stuck on out of your system." me too, sister, me too. fran, rather stupidly, decides to forgive sheldrake for his philandering ways, and what with the fact that his wife chucks him out, prompted by the delightfully nosy and vengeful secretary, the two seem to be ending up together when fran finally comes to her senses. i think one of my favorite things about this movie is that there's no big kiss at the end. the romance is clinched with a game of gin rummy.