I hadn't seen this for years (it has been digitally-restored and re-released) and I certainly didn't know that Billy Wilder was inspired by the man who lent his flat to Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter. But you couldn't miss how, fifty years later, The Apartment has influenced Mad Men ... the suits, the secretaries, the Martinis, the office Christmas party.
Maybe because I'd only seen it on television before, but I'd never noticed how visually stunning this movie is ... the views over New York, the dingily wallpapered stairs up to Jack Lemmon's apartment and his bachelor kitchenette. (The antithesis of the highly desirable lemon-yellow kitchen that had me and every other woman in the audience sighing at the Royal Opera House last week. Those Merry Wives of Windsor took enormous pride in their Formica.)
Who could resist Jack Lemmon draining spaghetti through a tennis racquet or modelling his Junior Executive hat? Like Breakfast at Tiffany's,  it's a movie that manages to be touching and tawdry at the same time ...
In fact, all those married men who borrow The Apartment could have stepped straight out of this book.