There aren't many films that have New Year as the theme from beginning to end, but there are certainly loads of great movies that have New Year's scenes in them, like When Harry Met Sally — and like this movie released in 1960, produced and directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray. It's called The Apartment.
The titular apartment refers to the one inhabited by Jack Lemmon's character, who is busy trying to climb the corporate ladder. In doing so, he allows his boss (MacMurray) to bring girlfriends to the apartment for trysts, so the boss's wife doesn't find out.
In all that, the themes of infidelity and adultery were hugely controversial in 1960, but The Apartment was still a commercial and critical success.
Lemmon's character, Bud Baxter, is really in love from afar with MacLaine's character, Fran Kubelik, but the happy ending doesn't come to the end of the film, and it involves a New Year's party.
For the music, Wilder turned to Charles Williams, a British-born composer and conductor who contributed music to more than 50 films, but a lot of his music was not credited because his work came to films as "stock music," and therefore he didn't need to be credited.
The theme from The Apartment was a huge hit; you'd hear it on radio in the early 1960s as a popular love theme.
This week on Flicks in Five, we'll hear Charles Williams' love theme from The Apartment.
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