she insane? This is Paul Newman in his prime we’re talking about, and he’s totally focussed on making her fall for him. Even to the point of bidding a fortune for her picnic at a local county fair so she’s forced to eat lunch with him. What could be sexier or harder to resist?
Okay, sorry, getting a grip here. Luckily, Clara’s got a lot more integrity than I do (I would have said yes in a heartbeat and the movie would have been over) and she doesn’t give in….
Not until she sees there’s a chink in Ben’s armour. Maybe he’s not as self-assured and ruthless as he pretends to be, maybe there’s actually someone worth taming behind all that arrogant, audacious sex appeal….
But quite apart from the fabulous characters, all that sizzling sexual tension and full-steam-ahead conflict, what really makes this movie stand out is the casting—and the real-life love story behind it. Because as well as Paul Newman in all his glory, we have a young Joanne Woodward cast opposite him as Clara at the exact moment when the two of them were falling in love for real.
The sparks seem to fly off the screen, and this explains exactly why these two had a marriage that defied Hollywood convention and lasted half a century—right up until Paul’s death in 2008 at the grand old age of eighty-three.
When I walked out of the NFT that long-ago summer, I had set my heart on marrying Paul one day. Needless to say, I was a tad miffed to discover he was already taken (not to mention nearly old enough to be my granddad), but when I found out he’d married Clara, well, I was prepared to take it on the chin—because I’d fallen for Joanne, too. She was more than a match for him, and I’d seen exactly why the two of them deserved their Happy Ever After.
They were meant to be together and the evidence is all right here in glorious Technicolor. Watch it and see for yourself.
So if you’re ever in the mood to reaffirm your love of romance or looking for proof positive that there is such a thing as a love that lasts forever, go hunt this movie down on Netflix or catch it the next time it’s on telly. Wait for the scene when Paul’s Ben says to Joanne’s reluctant Clara,
All right then, run, lady, and keep on running. Buy yourself a bus ticket and disappear. Change your name, dye your hair, get lost—and then maybe, just maybe, you’re gonna be safe from me.
And feel the shiver run down your spine.
The Apartment (1960): Mad Men with Laughs
Directed by Billy Wilder
Starring:
Jack Lemmon as C. C. Baxter
Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik
Fred MacMurray as Jeff D. Sheldrake
Ray Walston as Joe Dobisch
Jack Kruschen as Dr Dreyfuss
The rom-com against which all others must be judged (and most will be found wanting), writer-director Billy Wilder’s tale of the troubled romance between an ambitious young insurance adjuster and a heartsick elevator operator was made over fifty years ago but, like all great romances, can effortlessly capture your heart to this day.
As well as the incomparable script, what makes this movie really shine is the perfect casting of a young and adorable Jack Lemmon as an eager-to-please office drone in a huge Manhattan insurance firm—and a young and equally adorable Shirley MacLaine as the smart, pretty lift girl whom he fancies from afar but whose chirpy persona hides a heartbreaking secret.
How does he find out her secret? Well, that’s part of the movie’s brilliant premise—and where the title comes in.
Lemmon’s character C. C. Baxter, you see, is an average low-level employee, but he has ambition, courtesy of his downtown bachelor pad, which he allows his married bosses to use for their clandestine affairs on a nightly basis. So far so Mad Men.
C.C. isn’t really as calculating and cynical as that state of affairs suggests, though. He’s just a cog in a rather corrupt and unpleasant wheel, trying to get ahead. In fact, his apartment-loaning service has sort of backfired on him, because given the power dynamics of the situation (and his rather weak will), C.C. can’t say no when he’s asked to loan out his home at all hours of the night. But C.C.’s wake-up call, his discovery that what he is doing is really much more seedy than he has realised, comes when he is asked by top boss Mr Sheldrake (a brilliantly slimy performance from Fred MacMurray) to loan out his apartment key exclusively for Sheldrake’s latest extramarital fling.
C.C. thinks he’s finally going to get the promotion he’s been hoping for and is delighted with himself, until he makes the devastating discovery (in a poignant, bittersweet exchange at an office Christmas party) that Sheldrake’s latest conquest is none other than Fran Kubelik, the elevator girl he adores. But much worse is yet to come. What he doesn’t yet know is that Fran is as sweet and vulnerable as she appears. Fran has believed Sheldrake’s lies about leaving his wife, and when she is finally beaten down by her lover’s neglect and cruel manipulation she takes an overdose of sleeping pills…on Christmas Eve in the apartment of you-know-who.
C.C. comes back to find her passed out in his bed, and that’s when the comedy takes a dark turn, giving way to a moving and eventually heart-wrenching romance about two people cast adrift in the big city, who must learn not only to love each other, but to love themselves, as well.
I’ve probably given away far too much of the plot. But actually, it’s hard to describe how subtle and wonderfully nuanced this story is—and how remarkably real, even now. Portraying the sexual politics of New York office life, circa 1960, with an honesty and complexity and conspicuous lack of glamour, the film is both a brilliant snapshot of a bygone era and also a remarkably contemporary love story. Both Lemmon and MacLaine play superbly to type—but even the supporting roles, of Lemmon’s seedy line managers, the brash office totty, C.C.’s harassed next-door neighbours, are expertly realised.
If you’ve ever wondered what Mad Men might be like with a lot more laughs, then you need look no further than this beautifully observed, surprisingly dark and yet eventually heart-warming movie that continues to get better and better with age.
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968): How to Beat a Guy at Chess, Every Time
Directed by Norman Jewison
Starring:
Steve McQueen as Thomas Crown
Faye Dunaway as Vicki Anderson
Paul Burke as Eddie Malone
Jack Weston as Erwin
Biff McGuire as Sandy
I adore Steve McQueen. He is the King of Cool for a very good reason. The ultimate movie bad boy, he oozes tough, rugged sex appeal in all his movies, even the rubbish ones. But I’ve always thought that The Thomas Crown Affair is his sexiest screen appearance. A romantic-heist-thriller wrapped in stylish sixties chic and packed with enough sexual tension to blow anyone’s socks off—it’s as cool and sexy today as it was in 1968.
The plot has Steve’s bad-boy billionaire pulling the ‘perfect’ heist, because he’s bored. A dark mix of the smouldering
