The Apartment: Limited Edition – Arrow Video (UHD)

Theatrical Release Date: USA, 1960
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, Edie Adams

Release Date: November 24th, 2025
Approximate Running Time: 125 Minutes 15 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 Widescreen / 2160 Progressive / HEVC / H.265 / HDR10 Dolby Vision
Rating: PG (UK)
Sound: DTS-HD Mono English, DTS-HD 5.1 English
Subtitles: English SDH
Region Coding: Region Free
Retail Price: £29.99 (UK)

"C.C. Bud Baxter (Lemmon) is a lowly Manhattan office drone with a lucrative sideline in renting out his apartment to adulterous company bosses and their mistresses. When Bud enters into a similar arrangement with the firm's personnel director, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray, The Caine Mutiny), his career prospects begin to look up... and up. But when he discovers that Sheldrake's mistress is Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine, Irma la Douce), the girl of his dreams, he finds himself forced to choose between his career and the woman he loves..." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 5/5 (4K UHD)

Here’s the information provided about this release's transfer, “The 4K master has been made available by MGM via Park Circus.

The HDR10 and Dolby Vision grades were completed by Fidelity in Motion."

The Apartment comes on a 100 GB triple layer 4K UHD.

Disc Size: 92 GB

Feature: 83.7 GB

The source looks immaculate; this is another exemplary encode from Fidelity in Motion. That said, this transfer looks gorgeous, and The Apartment has never looked better on home media.

Audio: 5/5 (DTS-HD Mono English), 4.5/5 (DTS-HD 5.1 English)

This release comes with two audio options, a DTS-HD mono mix in English and a DTS-HD 5.1 mix in English. The mono mix is in excellent shape; dialogue always comes through clearly; everything sounds balanced; and ambient sounds are well-represented. Range-wise, this track sounds excellent considering its mono limitations. The 5.1 mix is also in great shape, and it does a good job of expanding the mono source. Included with this release are removable English subtitles.

Extras:

Extras for this release include a theatrical trailer (2 minutes 19 seconds, Dolby Digital mono English, no subtitles), scene select audio commentary with film historian Philip Kemp (8 minutes 37 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), an interview with Philip Kemp titled The Key to The Apartment (10 minutes 12 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), a video essay by filmmaker David Cairns titled The Flawed Couple, in which he discusses Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon collaborations (20 minutes 23 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), an archival interview director Billy Wilder titled The Writer Speaks, from the Writers Guild of America's Oral Histories series (23 minutes 17 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), an interview with actress Hope Holiday titled A Letter to Castro (13 minutes 23 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), an archival featurette titled Magic Time: The Art of Jack Lemmon (12 minutes 47 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), an archival featurette titled Inside The Apartment, featuring interviews with Shirley MacLaine, executive producer Walter Mirisch, and others (29 minutes 36 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), an audio commentary with film producer and historian Bruce Block, reversible cover art, a slipcover (limited to the first pressing), and 44-page booklet (limited to the first pressing) with cast & crew information, an essay titled Sweet and Sour: The Greatest of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment written by Neil Sinyard, an essay titled Broken Mirrors: Illusions and Disillusion in Billy Wilder’s “Diamond” Comedies written by Kat Ellinger, an essay titled “Shut Up and Deal”: The Changing Candor of 1960’s Hollywood Cinema… Morality-Wise written by Travis Crawford and H.V. Hyche and information about the transfer.

Summary:

An insurance clerk trying to get ahead at his job lets his executives at his company use his apartment for rendezvous with their mistresses.

The Apartment would reunite Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder, who had previously collaborated on Some Like It Hot. In all, Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder would collaborate seven times. The other five films are Irma la Douce, The Fortune Cookie, Avanti!, The Front Page, and Buddy Buddy. Although The Apartment contains all the ingredients that have since become synonymous with their other collaborations, most notably, their use of humor, the end result is a much darker film than those aforementioned films.

The entire cast are excellent in their roles, and yet there would be no The Apartment without its two leads: Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot) and Shirley MacLaine (Being There). Jack Lemmon portrays the protagonist, an insurance clerk named C.C. Baxter, whose apartment executives are using for their affairs. Shirley MacLaine portrays an elevator operator named Fran Kubelik, who is having an affair with C.C. Baxter’s boss. Both actors deliver performances that many consider their finest, and they display truly remarkable on-screen chemistry.

While cinephiles are aware of who Billy Wilder was, with each passing generation he is becoming less known. He was a gifted filmmaker who had a knack for executing poignant moments and humor and, in many instances, blending these two elements. His direction for The Apartment is masterful; he was a filmmaker at the pinnacle of his craft, and his subsequent films never surpassed what he accomplished with The Apartment.

Although there are many memorable moments in The Apartment, there are two that stand out. The first notable moment is when a distraught Fran takes a large dose of sleeping pills after realizing her affair with a married man has no future. The second moment is the finale, which many consider to be one of cinema’s most satisfying conclusions.

From a production standpoint, there is no area where The Apartment does not excel. The premise is superbly realized; characters are well-defined, and a flawlessly executed narrative moves briskly for a film that clocks in at 125 minutes. Ultimately, The Apartment is a perfect blend of melodrama and humor, making it one of Billy Wilder’s greatest films.

The Apartment gets a definitive release from Arrow Video. Highly recommended.

Note about the 4K screenshots: It is not possible to make Dolby Vision or HDR10 screenshots that faithfully match the experience of watching a film in motion on a TV. Instead of not having any screenshots, all of the 4K screenshots are m2ts taken with a MPC-HC player and lossless PNGs.

Written by Michael Den Boer