Wed 7 Jan 8.00 Thurs 8 Jan 5.45 & 8.30
Dir: Billy Wilder (1960, reissue 2007) US 2hr 5mins.
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine
Diamond-sharp satire with a brilliant performance from Lemmon as the insurance clerk who forges ahead in the rat race by lending his apartment out to philandering senior executives, only to outsmart himself when the girl of his dreams (MacLaine) is brought there by his boss. Welcome recent reissue which was voted as No.12 in Empire magazine’s 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. Their critics said: “On the surface, it’s the straight downtrodden-boy-meets-indifferent-girl formula, but Wilder, who skipped Berlin as the Nazis came to power, came possessed of a more savage view of the world’s workings. […] Their meandering path to romance twists between notions of prostitution (corporate and real) and even suicide. Meet-cute it is not.”
