The Apartment: Billy Wilder’s Christmas classic is the blueprint for romcoms everywhere
For romantic comedies and Christmas movies alike, a little misery can go a long way.No one understood this balancing act more than Billy Wilder, whose films ran the gamut from bottomless cynicism (Ace in the Hole) to gender-bending farce (Some Like it Hot).His 1960 film, The Apartment, splits the difference.Like another yuletide classic, Carol, the film finds inspiration in David Lean’s Brief Encounter, which depicts an extramarital affair briefly consummated in the bed of a friend’s apartment.In an old interview, Wilder says he was compelled by a character “who comes back home and climbs into the warm bed the lovers just left”, and so The Apartment’s hero, CC “Bud” Baxter, was born.
Baxter, played by Jack Lemmon (hired right off the back of Some Like it Hot), is an insurance worker who scales the corporate ladder by leasing his bedroom to a rotating cast of middle managers.The concept isn’t far removed from an Airbnb, though Baxter weathers the additional humiliations of accommodating his superiors’ sexual conquests outside work.On one sorry occasion, a late request sees him stranded in Central Park on a winter’s night.Wilder didn’t necessarily conceive of the film as a comedy (at times, Joseph LaShelle’s shadowy cinematography more readily evokes noir), but in his own words: “When they laugh, I don’t argue.” Wilder and co-writer IAL Diamond’s playful plotting and staccato repartee keep the film from sinking into the gutter, and Lemmon remains endlessly likable while channelling Baxter’s nervous energy into a spectacle of physical gestures.
Each dramatic reveal is offset by a similarly unforgettable joke, whether it’s Lemmon fussing over the placement of a bowler hat or straining spaghetti through a tennis racket,When Baxter develops an innocent crush on Shirley MacLaine’s elevator operator, Fran Kubelik, he unknowingly finds himself in competition with Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), the company’s personnel director,Kubelik has sworn off Sheldrake after a summer fling (one of many that this family man has conducted within the office), but he lures her back into his arms when he dishonestly vows to leave his marriage for her,The same day, he offers Baxter a promotion in return for exclusive usage of his Upper West Side abode,Sheldrake may be a philandering emotional terrorist – at the time, MacMurray had become a Disney icon, leaving some audiences scandalised – but Bud discovers the limits to his downtrodden “nice guy” exterior when he encounters a passed-out Kubelik in his apartment on Christmas Eve.
As Baxter and Kubelik finally get to know each other, Wilder works through the self-loathing at each character’s core.Kubelik struggles to believe she’s worthy of anything greater than a tryst with a man who leaves her a $100 note before returning to his wife and children for the holidays.Baxter lacks the courage to stand up for himself and risks numbing himself entirely to the spiritual corruption he’s become immersed in.To illustrate the point, Wilder frames his workplace as an unending procession of desks and bodies, with production designer Alexandre Trauner making clever use of forced perspective tricks.With the film being made in the twilight era of the Hays Code, MacLaine embodies a more candid, less inhibited form of female sexuality than had been typically portrayed on screen.
It’s a sweet, unconventional performance that’s subsequently informed any number of manic pixie dream girls and alt-heroines; her ecstatic, new year’s sprint through the streets of New York has become the template for the romcom’s climactic dash towards destiny.In romance and business, ethics are always optional; as Kubelik muses, “some people take, some people get took”.Six decades on, its depiction of atomisation and alienation has barely aged; ill-advised workplace affairs endure, forms of self-commodification have multiplied, and insurance companies remain deeply evil.For anyone who finds themselves lonely on Christmas – or any other day of the year – there are few films more comforting than The Apartment.The Apartment is streaming on MGM+ in Australia and the UK and Fubo in the US, as well as available to rent globally.
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Gold, silver and platinum hit record highs as investors look for Santa rally; BP to sell stake in Castrol for $6bn – business live
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.Gold has climbed over the $4,500 per ounce mark for the first time ever, on the final trading day before Christmas.As investors look for signs of a Santa Rally today, bullion has risen as high as $4,525 per ounce. Gold has risen for 11 of the last 12 days, taking its gains in 2025 to over 70%, its best year since 1979.There’s a general frenzy in the precious metals market
Bitcoin’s buzz is gone. Investors chose real gold in 2025 | Nils Pratley
Another week, another record high for the price of gold. And another blow to the bitcoin fan club’s hopeful thesis about owning “digital gold”. This year has been hard for the bitcoin brigade: while real gold soared in value, their cryptocurrency didn’t. Correlation went out of the window. Gold is up 70% so far in dollar terms; bitcoin is down 6%
‘A gamechanger’: 200,000 UK small businesses sign up to TikTok Shop
It is better known for its viral dances and for making hits out of forgotten songs, but the social media site TikTok is becoming a force to be reckoned with as a shopping platform.Major retailers such as Marks & Spencer, Samsung, QVC, Clarks, and Sainsbury’s are now selling their wares on the site’s e-commerce service, TikTok Shop, alongside more than 200,000 UK small and medium businesses.Launched in Britain in 2021, TikTok Shop recorded its biggest sales day in the UK on Black Friday, with 27 items sold every second. Across the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period, sales were up by 50% on last year.The service works by letting brands sell directly inside TikTok through videos and livestreams with embedded links to items for sale, as well as through a separate shop tab on their profiles
Former EU commissioner and activists barred from US in attack on European tech regulators
The state department has barred five Europeans from the US, accusing them of leading efforts to pressure tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints, in the latest attack on European regulations that target hate speech and misinformation.Secretary of state Marco Rubio said the five people targeted with visa bans – who include former European Commissioner Thierry Breton – have led “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”“These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states – in each case targeting American speakers and American companies,” Rubio said in an announcement.In recent months, Trump officials have ordered US diplomats to build opposition to the European Union’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which is intended to combat hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation, but which Washington says stifles free speech and imposes costs on US tech companies.Late on Tuesday night, Breton posted on social media: “Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?”Tuesday’s move is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or sanctions
Harry Redknapp eyes King George glory in ‘Champions League’ of racing
FA Cup-winning manager and former King of the Jungle has live hopes of landing the big Boxing Day prize at Kempton with Jukebox ManHe has been a professional footballer, an FA Cup-winning manager and the King of the Jungle over the storied course of the past 60 years, but as Harry Redknapp talked about The Jukebox Man, his King George VI Chase contender, at Ben Pauling’s stable last week, he was the East End kid whose nan was a bookie’s runner and would be astonished to see where life and luck have taken her grandson.“She wouldn’t believe it,” Redknapp says, suddenly back in Poplar in the 1950s. “It’s a far cry from the East End of London, [when she was] getting slung in the back of a police van every other day for collecting the bets.“People forget there were no betting shops, betting was totally illegal, so the only way you could have a bet was through an illegal bookmaker. Cyril the paperboy, he wasn’t a boy, he was about 70, but everyone still called him the paperboy
Trump loomed over sport like never before in 2025. Next year he will take even more
From the Super Bowl to UFC cards to the US Open to the Ryder Cup, the US president has turned sport into his own personal stage. There’s more to comeConsidering he’s the self-declared hardest working president to ever hold the office, Donald Trump has spent a remarkable amount of the past year on down time. In 2025, he loomed over sports like no American politician before him, his visits to stadiums and arenas and golf courses and race tracks so frequent they began to feel like part of the job. But if Trump’s presence on the sporting scene has seemed hard to escape, gird yourselves for 2026, when the American presidency no longer merely intersects with sport but threatens to subsume it. The World Cup is on the way, the Olympics are right behind it, a UFC card is coming to the White House lawn (not a joke) and the commander-in-chief’s well-documented fondness for jumbotrons is becoming less of a habit than a dependency
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