"When you're in love with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara"

Jack Lemmon’s portrayal of C.C. Baxter allows the audience to see him both as a dupe and a contributing member to the duplicitous underbelly of professional society.  He lends out his apartment so that his superiors have a place to bed down their girlfriends.  Why don’t they take them to their place instead of an employee’s?  They’re all married men.  If this wasn’t bad enough almost every character in the film approaches these extra-marital arrangements as normal and even expected.  At times their attitudes (both male and female) may pass for cynical and sarcastic, but they are commenting on relationships that they are in fact a part of and so even their sarcasm reads as insincere.

Baxter is inconvenienced by the arrangement and even annoyed, but as he sees it as a way to advance his career he continues with the arrangement until he comes face to face with the cost of enabling other men’s depravity.  After seeing what it does to Fran Kubelik, played by Shirley MacLaine, an elevator operator that he’s sweet on he grows enough backbone to end the arrangement.  MacLaine spends the first third or so of the film being too cute for us to believe that she’s the “other woman”, but alas, it is her character who tells us “When you’re in love with a married man, you shouldn’t wear mascara.” The “classic” love story evolves as expected, but it is more complicated than that as C.C. Baxter has an active role in keeping Fran with another man.

The film, while enjoyable, suffers from its length.  At over 2 hours it is difficult to believe after watching it that the film requires 125 minutes to reach its conclusion.  Even worse the conclusion feels rushed.  The film is all set up but then fails to reward the dutiful audience with an appropriate payoff.  If this was rectified it would score higher–perhaps much–but as it is it earns the film a solid 2.