< The Apartment >-- A funny, witty, self-realization comedy

I love Jack Lemmon's movies!
They always make me laugh~
His comedies are not the kind that you only laugh once when you first saw them,
but the kind that you find them even more amusing when you watch them for the second,
the third, or even the forth time.
And one of the examples is this movie <The Apartment>.
This is a movie about C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon),
an employee in a huge insurance company.
In order to get promotions,
Baxter lends his apartment to his bosses and their mistresses.
This is a mutual benefit exchange,
however, I just cannot help but pity Baxter.
Not only because his neighbors misunderstand him as a Don Juan type person,
but he is also forced to leave his home to his bosses, when he had a terrible cold.
Eventually Baxter gets what he wants,
but he becomes increasingly depress when he finds out that
the girl he likes is his boss' mistress.
In the end, Baxter decides to give up his job and apartment to start a new life...
The movie ends happily,
but it nonetheless points out the coldness within human being.
For example, when Baxter stops giving his apartment key to his previous bosses,
they begin to complain and criticize him in his back.
The story tells us that some people can be real good to you
only because they can get something from you, and once you
become useless or refuse to help, they will just toss you aside without second thought.
I guess Baxter is close to this kind of person in the beginning of the movie,

from his opening narrative:"On November 1st, 1959, the population of New York City was 8,042,783. If you laid all these people end to end, figuring an average height of five feet six and a half inches, they would reach from Times Square to the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan. I know facts like this because I work for an insurance company - Consolidated Life of New York. We're one of the top five companies in the country. Our home office has 31,259 employees, which is more than the entire population of uhh... Natchez, Mississippi. I work on the 19th floor. Ordinary Policy Department, Premium Accounting Division, Section W, desk number 861." 
All these figures show that Baxter is hard-working, but also a bit cold person,
who are willing to give up everything in order to get promotions.
However, as the plot unveiled, Baxter finds out that getting promotions 
via this method does not make him happy.
He feels empty and loss,
because everything is base on what you can offer others in order to get what you want.
He loses himself into an endless compromising.
That the reason why he chooses to leave for good...

I want to watch more Jack Lemmon's movies,
because he is extremely funny!!
His collaboration with Shirley MacLaine is also amazing!!


P.S. Quote comes from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053604/quotes?ref_=tt_ql_3