Born in Sucha, Austria-Hungary, now part of Poland, on June 22, 1906 with the given name Samuel, Billy Wilder grew up originally planning to be a lawyer. Abandoning this pursuit to work as a reporter in Vienna and eventually in Berlin he broke into screenwriting in 1929 with Der Teufelsreporter. When Hitler came to power in 1933, however, the Jewish European immigrated to the United States.

Without speaking a word of English he made good on a number of helpful contacts, Peter Lorre among them, and learned the language to start a career in Hollywood. First contributing story ideas he wrote his first studio script called Music in the Air in 1934. Later that same year he also wrote and directed his first feature film, Mauvaise graine (aka Bad Blood), after which a number of scripts followed.

In 1938 he partnered with Charles Brackett and together they wrote such comedy classics as Ninotchka and Ball of Fire. By the early '40s, and after assuming his now famous role as co-writer/director with Brackett as his co-writer/producer, the pair made Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard before dissolving their partnership.

Subsequently Wilder turned writer/director/producer and became more cynical in films like Ace in the Hole (1951) and Stalag 17 (1953) with occasional comic broadsides like Sabrina (1954) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). In the late '50s he entered into another writing partnership with I.A.L. Diamond whereupon they turned out some of the richest films in Hollywood history. Starting with Some Like It Hot in 1959 and continuing through The Apartment, The Fortune Cookie and The Front Page in 1974 his films succeeded on the basis of smart dialogue, strong acting and a tone filled with a mix of warm sentimentality and basic scorn for the contradictions seemingly inherent in the human condition.

After retiring in 1981 with the release of Buddy Buddy, Wilder became an icon of the classic Hollywood era. Many of his films have weathered the test of time and such modern day devotees as Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe now maintain his legacy with the appropriate attention due an old master.

Not insignificantly Wilder's career as writer/director/producer has also been one of the most well rewarded individual bodies of work in moviedom. Some contemporary filmmakers like Woody Allen have begun to rival his level of success in this regard but his record of nominations and wins at the Academy Awards is a truly awesome accomplishment. First nominated for a screenwriting award for Ninotchka in 1940 and continuing all the way through a Thalberg career achievement citation in 1988, Wilder received a total of 12 nominations with three wins for screenwriting, eight nominations with two wins for direction and one Best Motion Picture award for The Apartment.

Renowned as one of the great screen comedies of all time and as the last movie of the year to be produced on black and white film before Schindler's List, The Apartment is a darkly comic morality play swaddled in then contemporary clothes. It begins with the voice-over introduction of C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) who explains how he's an insurance analyst in Manhattan. The main trouble with his bachelor's life, aside from being lonely, is that he's made a habit of lending out his apartment to four of his colleagues as a pied a terre for their extra-marital affairs. Unfortunately, these four men lord the privilege over his head in exchange for their support in his bid for promotion.

Smitten with an elevator girl named Fran (Shirley MacLaine), Baxter begins to see his star rise at work. When his boss Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) threatens to expose his apartment-lending ploy as the means for his professional ascension, however, Baxter folds and gives his employer an apartment key for his own adulterous dalliances.

Through force of circumstance Baxter later learns that Fran is Sheldrake's mistresses just before she overdoses on sleeping pills in Baxter's apartment after realizing she means nothing to Sheldrake. Returning home alone her would-be boyfriend and erstwhile corporate climber finds her near death but is able to revive her with the help of a neighboring doctor. Playing the go-between for his heel of a boss, Baxter looks after Fran and falls in love with her over her two-day convalescence in his home.

Unable to express his true feelings but once again on the receiving end of an unearned promotion, Baxter is backed into a corner. He finds out that Sheldrake's wife kicked him out because of his adultery and now he wants to continue seeing Fran using Baxter's apartment. Asked to lend his house key heretofore spineless insurance man refuses to play ball and quits his job.

At a New Year's Eve party Fran learns of Baxter's actions and puts together the puzzle pieces of his devotion. Standing up Sheldrake she rushes to the well-used apartment where she finds Baxter ready to embrace her as they look forward to a new life together.

Though generally categorized as a comedy, what's most remarkable about The Apartment is the way pathos acts as a sobering pivot. Sure there are good jokes, witty repartee, some physical humor and good situational comedy based on Baxter accommodating the amorous intentions of his various co-workers. Then there are a number of jokes related to Wilder's career and filmography that cater to Hollywood insiders and movie fans alike, perhaps most obviously in reference to Marilyn Monroe. But the real surprise of the film is the way Fran's suicide attempt inserts a meaningful set of observations about the state of sexual mores, professional ambition and life in the big city.

As Baxter notes in his opening voice over there are some 8,000,000 citizens of New York, all of them looking for an edge in a better paying job or a more satisfying life. To that end each character in The Apartment, Baxter and Fran included, seems out to get ahead though not always with their own best interests at heart.

Thus Fran's innocence and youth makes her the unwitting pray of slick adulterers like Sheldrake. Baxter's affability and willingness to please makes him a doormat for his higher-ups and co-workers. Together they long for real human connection but they're continually tied up with the divide between people so aptly described by Fran when she explains that some people take and some people are taken. Nowhere is the point made clearer than in the way Baxter's apartment is used as sexual rendez-vous for men who are willing to chew him up and spit him out, all as part of a good day's work.

Another remarkable aspect of the picture is it's surprisingly explicit take on sex play in late 1959. With the exception of Baxter, and this despite being forced to mislead his landlady and neighbors about activities in his apartment and earn the label of lothario, everyone believes in self-satisfaction even at the expense of marriage vows and traditional monogamy. Unbelievably none of the profanity we've become accustomed to in description of sex and intimacy in our popular films is necessary with the clever use of euphemism throughout The Apartment. Characters speak about their sexual appetites, conquests, needs and proclivities and such conversation is smartly written, easily delivered and intuitively critical of the kinds of behavior simultaneously put on display.

On the surface designed to depict the joys and occasional irritations in the life of well-to-do big city singles, The Apartment instead ridicules the promiscuity, licentiousness and cruelty of people in the modern age. It defines the supporting characters against broad stereotypes but renders them in three-dimensions using the talents of actors like Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen and Edie Adams who imbue their parts with the kind of charisma and idiosyncrasy that makes them believably real.

An obvious result of the movie's masterful filmmaking is that Wilder's earned the Academy Awards triple crown with Oscars for his writing, directing and picture of the year. To the film's tally were added a design and editing award along with several nominations but one note about the movie awards for 1960 also needs to be highlighted.

Nominated for the Best Motion Picture Academy Award against Elmer Gantry, Sons and Lovers, The Sundowners and The Alamo, which wasn't a contender aside from its marketing campaign, The Apartment won top honors over the non-nominated classics Psycho and Spartacus. Not one to dismiss Wilder's picture, especially as an ultimately reassuring farce about contemporary sensibilities, it is significant that the critical establishment was unable to recognize the brilliance of Hitchcock's horror film or Kubrick's epic set in Roman times but one year after the awards sweep of Ben-Hur.

Perhaps it was a case of popular genre films being left off the critical docket despite their ample excellence. Or maybe it's the case of preferring a bona fide Hollywood good old boy in Billy Wilder who'd already produced The Lost Weekend, picture of the year for 1945. Regardless, Psycho and Spartacus deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as The Apartment in light of their lasting worth to the cinema as a popular art form. Not that this effort would, in any way, take away from the excellence of Wilder's movie.

On the contrary such reconsideration would affirm how terrific a movie it really is in light of its competition.