Best Picture Winners (pt. III)

The Apartment

Amadeus

In just a few days the 2023 Oscar nominations will be announced, so I figured it was time for another dip into the vast list of previous Best Picture winners. The Oscars won’t be airing until March, but until then, all we can do is speculate who might win, who might get snubbed, and which celebrity will be at the center of an awards show scandal. In the 94 years that the Oscars have existed, this award show has, for better or worse, decided what the pivotal films of each year are. And as I scrolled through a century of nominees and winners, I couldn’t help loving the sublime randomness of it all. I know that in two months, when my favorite films and actors are snubbed, I’ll feel differently, but right now I can really appreciate just how disparate and diverse the long list of Best Picture winners are. Every time I look into the Best Picture winners, I typically find myself loving one film and feeling lukewarm about the other—and tonight was no exception. I began with a film that every cinefile and movie buff recommends, a film that, in addition to winning Best Picture in 1960, also won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Best Editing, Best Screenplay, and Best Director: Billy Wilder’s The Apartment. The Apartment follows lowly corporate insurance drone C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), a man well-versed in numbers, and completely devoid of self-esteem. Baxter just wants to make it out of his cubicle and onto the corporate ladder, so in return for their glowing recommendations, he loans his apartment out to the executives at his office so they may have a place to take their mistresses. Baxter cleans up their messes, spends most of his nights out in the cold, and makes up excuses to his neighbors, all for bureaucratic bread crumbs. While this poor shmuck gets virtually nothing in return for the use of his apartment, Baxter is just happy to get to work so he can see Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the elevator operator he’s been crushing on and stalking. You see, Baxter isn’t like the lecherous and abusive executives in his building, he’s just annoying and creepy. Eventually he wears Fran down and she agrees to go out with him—the only issue is, she happens to be the mistress of one of his many demanding bosses. The Apartment is often sold as a comedy, but I’d like to specify that this film’s sense of humor is distinctly dark and decidedly existential. It’s not what I expected, for a film from 1960 to feature dialogue that’s feels current, but then again, its premise somehow doesn’t feel too far in the past, either. The script was quippy and clever, but also felt real. Instead of the goofy one-liners and kooky hijinks that I expected, The Apartment is imbued with irony, and explores the of cycles of masochism that make up so much of human nature. The Apartment has the perfect blend of cynicism and hopefulness, and while it failed to convince me that Fred MacMurray is hot, it really sold me on its equally-depressed-equally-hopeful ethos. Jack Lemmon, the eternal “nice guy”, the ultimate simp, was reliably funny, and Shirley MacLaine was reliably lovable—and further proved that she is one of the few among us who can successfully pull off a pixie cut. Its callout of corporate greed and patriarchal abuse of power is terrifyingly current, and depressingly universal. And while it is fair to categorize The Apartment as a comedy, (I mean they’re calling The Banshees of Inishiren a comedy, after all) it is so much more than this. It’s a dark comedy, an office-based drama, a disillusioned American classic, and a Christmas movie, all in one. [But the best, and shortest, synopsis of this film that I can provide is this.] The Apartment offered so much more than I expected, and the next film, offered juuust a bit less. Miloš Forman’s 1984 film Amadeus won the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup, Best Sound, Best Editing, and one of its leads won Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham, who’s so hot right now.) Amadeus is among the pantheon of somewhat historical somewhat fictional period pieces that has **fun** with it—ala Barry Lyndon, Marie Antoinette, and The Favourite—but I’m not sure if this one is among my favorites. Amadeus begins in the winter of 1823, after composer Antonio Salieri attempts suicide and ends up in a psychiatric ward. (I swear I didn’t mean to pick TWO not-so-funny comedies…) Now elderly and full of regret, Salieri recounts the story of his life to a young priest, and details the epic of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Salieri always dreamed of being a famous composer, and by 1774, he became the court composer to Emperor Joseph II in Vienna. Seven years later, talk of a prodigal composer named Mozart starts going around, and the Emperor swiftly invites him to Vienna. Much to Salieri’s surprise, the once-in-a-generation, transcendentally talented Mozart turns out to be a total mess. Mozart (Animal House’s Tom Hulce) is shockingly lewd, obscenely rude, and has an obnoxious laugh that can only be considered grating if you’ve never heard the RuPaul over-laugh. Salieri, a devout Catholic, cannot fathom why god would bless a fool like Mozart with the talents that Antonio is so clearly meant for, and thus begins a bitter one-sided rivalry that spans decades and really tests the limits of being a hater. Along with a cameo from a very young Cynthia Nixon, Amadeus featured a cast of character actors and actresses, younger than you’ve ever seen them. Much like The Apartment, Amadeus’ humor came packaged in melancholy, which was a shock to this critic, who’d only ever known Amadeus for its fart jokes. As Mozart loses his mind more and more, his music becomes more wildly entertaining, and Salieri becomes increasingly frustrated. Having just watched Tár, I was thoroughly excited to further explore the madness of musical geniuses, and while Amadeus certainly delivered on this, I was left wanting just a bit more. To its credit, Amadeus was beautifully styled, and while Mozart certainly werked every colorful wig that he wore, I was far more impressed by the pastel perfection of the women’s fashion. I always enjoy a modern take on an old classic, and I really loved watching the men and women of the Classical Era jam out to the music of their generation, but I felt this film dragging just a bit. It didn’t help that the version of Amadeus that I watched was the three-hour Director’s Cut, but as stunning as this film’s editing is, I still feel like it could be shaved down just a tad. Movies about music, or movies that analyze music in any way, are often among my favorites, so perhaps I placed Amadeus on too high a pedestal before viewing it. I was very intrigued by this film’s set up, and its promised voyage into a tale of jealousy and revenge—but I felt that every aspect (the satire, the darkness, the competitiveness) could’ve been pushed further. It just wasn’t as funny as I was expecting, it wasn’t as daring as I’d hoped, and while F. Murray Abraham’s portrayal of Salieri was riveting, I, too, began to tire of hearing about Mozart by the end of this film. I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from watching Amadeus, but I’m just saying, like, I’m an “older” movie person, and even I found myself somewhat bored. I was glad to dive back into the previous Best Picture winner list, and I was ultimately not surprised that one film was more entertaining than the other, since that’s kind of a tradition here. And regardless of what I have to say, you should still check these films, and more previous Oscar winners out. At the very least, so you can see that Marisa Tomei winning Best Actress for My Cousin Vinny is far from the most bizarre thing to happen at this award show.