The Apartment – review

A welcome return to the big screen of Wilder's masterly Brechtian fable on his recurrent theme of pimping, in this case a dim insurance company clerk ( Jack Lemmon ) lending his squalid Manhattan flat to his exurban seniors to conduct their affairs. Written in collaboration with IAL Diamond it won three Oscars in 1960 (best film, director, screenplay). Fred MacMurray is chilling as Lemmon's departmental boss, reprising his Double Indemnity insurance salesman 17 years on. Alexander Trauner's sets pay homage to King Vidor's The Crowd .