The Apartment (1960)

As per the rule good news first:

Very very very funny, the humor in the film has held up well, not being in references to the period made in makes it much for palatable for a future audience. Particularly the lady that he brings back on Christmas talking about her husband in jail and saying she'll tell him Baxter refuses to bed her as well as the running joke with the neighbors of how they think its him drinking the liquor and bringing home all the women. The plot is well written and thought out. The pacing keeps you interested with what could perhaps be considered a simple plot and the film is shot typical of an older movie, similar to how a play is acted on a stage. The characters while simple in nature bled very well into a mixing pot of emotions, struggles and stigmas of the time. If you can disconnect yourself from the year 2024 entirely and watch this film as a piece of media and limit it to just that then it is very enjoyable indeed and i would recommend it definitely being worth a watch. This however leads me onto another point...

This film has aged like milk. The only black person we see throughout the entire film is a shoe shiner with no lines, women are completely objectified and seen only as an extension of a man in a position of power having either slept with him or done some kind of favor for him. There is actually a character in it listed only as 'The Blonde' which nowadays just would not hold up. My biggest quarrel with it is its marginalization of suicide, having had seen the effect this can have on families and communities to see the girl make an attempt on her own life and be described as 'fine' by herself and her peers was quite jarring. The river often runs deep with people that have these feelings and in my opinion something like the scenario she was in would likely not be the only thing affecting her (putting a filter of realism onto the film). The other characters show a major lack of understanding and emotional depth, Baxter tries to play gin rummy with her after she wakes up, completely and purposefully avoids the topic of what happened, something that really should be addressed. I do however think that this film is a good exercise to try and get yourself to disassociate from the political connotations of a work and merely watch it for what it is, ironically forcing you to objectify itself as it does the minorities in it. Talk about karmic retribution.

In conclusion, is it a good piece of media? I'd say so, it's witty and creates a lot of emotion throughout it. Would it ever be made now? God no, and I think that's a good thing to be honest.