Why is this considered a Christmas film?
I'm confused, is Christmas the main theme like White Christmas or Miracle on 34th Street? Or is Christmas a minor plot point like The Bells of St. Mary?
shareWell, Christmas isn't a main theme of the film. There are only few scenes in the movies that related to Chrismas and New Year Eve: a office party scene and the ending
But it is very uplifting film that's very fit to watch at Christmas both with family and alone
Roger Ebert wrote an astute review of "The Apartment"(as one of his "Great Movies") that postulated the film well understood how the corridor week from Christmas Eve to New Year's Eve can be, at once, a time of togetherness for families and a time of great lonlieness for singles with no real outside contacts.
Hence we get the grand irony of Fred MacMurray's villainous Sheldrake at home in the wealthy suburbs with wife and sons at the Christmas tree as Jack Lemmon'ss CC Baxter works hard at saving the life of suicide attempter Fran (Shirley MacLaine.)
Yes there are the office party and the climax, but also the bar scene with the floozie whose Jockey husband is in a Cuban jail for the holidays(and she is willing to spend time with Lemmon in the meantime, and she is PLAYED by an actress named Hope Holliday), and there's a drunken Santa(played by Otis the Drunk from the soon-to-be-broadcast Andy Griffith show) and..well, its all there, really , both the joy and the pain of the season.
The Apartment IS a Christmas movie, but it takes in the good AND the bad of the holidays.