Synopsis for
The Apartment (1960) More at IMDbPro »

This is the simple tale of a mensch, a decent guy. He's not particularly brave or heroic, but he does have his scruples. These go largely unchallenged as he plods through a normal unobtrusive job: a junior accountant in a New York City firm of vast dimensions, a sea of adding machines on desks, one of which he inhabits during his workday. Baxter is not really a climber, but he does like to please - to a fault. He's called "Buddy Boy" by his more corporately conscious (and less principled) contemporaries, but he fails to see the manipulation behind their smiles and false camaraderie. He trudges home late every evening to a modest apartment where his tastes are simple to the point of spartan. He's the kind of guy who strains spaghetti in an old tennis racquet. And sings an aria while he does it, if only to himself. But nobody else sees that. He's pretty much invisible. Nobody hates him, but nobody loves him either. He's a gentle heart adrift in a sea of anonymity and loneliness. The perfect guppy in an ocean full of sharks. When they begin to circle, life starts getting complicated. His unscrupulous colleagues, sensing his innocent eagerness for approval in the form of company advancement, persuade him to let them use his bachelor apartment as a love nest for their secret trysts. It soon becomes a consuming second career to book the appointments, stock the room for the guests, and avoid conflicts that could very well threaten his day job, the only one he's earning pay for. He no longer has any space or time that is exclusively his. But that's just the beginning. When his boss makes a reservation on which Baxter's promotion rides he's as accommodating as usual. But the object of this conquest tries to commit suicide when the affair sours. Even worse, the victim is Miss Kubelik, a woman he knows at work and is fond of. He must deal with rescuing her, covering his boss, canceling the other reservations, and trying to confine the damage for himself to merely his reputation. C.C. Baxter does prevail at day's end, after being forced to assert himself and say "no" once in awhile, to at last risk making an enemy. And not lose his soul for it. He remains to the end a misunderstood, under-appreciated mensch, and nonetheless happy about that.