Flick Pick

They're both gone now, Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder, but they leave behind the bittersweet legacy of such Hollywood gems as Some Like It Hot and Fortune Cookie. The best of all their collaborations, perhaps, is The Apartment (1960), in revival Friday, January 3, at the Starz FilmCenter. It's a biting satire about office politics and the awful struggle to get ahead, starring Lemmon as a lowly corporate shlub hoping to curry favor with his boss (Fred MacMurray) by loaning his humble pad out to assorted executives for their illicit affairs. By turns ironic and uproarious, this wonderfully observant comedy presents Lemmon at his best: as the beleaguered urban Everyman who can never quite get a hold on his life. It's also Wilder in high form, the man who gave us Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard training his pitiless gaze on the strivings of ordinary men. Winner of three major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Story/Screenplay), the film features nice supporting turns from Ray Walston, Edie Adams and, best of all, Shirley MacLaine, as the visiting mistress Lemmon himself falls for. The Vienna-born Wilder, who said he once worked as a gigolo, was notorious for his cynicism, but he knew how to mix moods on screen. The Apartment stings, but it's also high-grade romantic fun -- and the occasion of one of Lemmon's most enduring performances. For information and showtimes, call 303-820-FILM (3456) or log on to www.starzfilmcenter.com.