The Apartment
Billy Wilder, 1960
Billy Wilder
• Over 50 films an 6 academy awards
• Born June 22, 1906 Samuel Wilder,
grew up Austro-Hungarian Empire
• Father, Max died in 1926 and his
mother Eugenia who spent a great deal
of time in America told him stories and
began his fascination with the US
Beginning of Career
• Started out as a journalist
• Received his first break as a filmmaker
in Germany in 1929: MENSCHEN AM
SONTAG (People on Sunday)
• Rise of the Nazis forced him to move to France,
and ultimately to the United States
He worked on and off until 1938, when he began a long
and fruitful collaboration with Charles Brackett. Their
partnership, which lasted twelve years, produced a
succession of box office hits including HOLD BACK
THE DAWN (1941), DOUBLE INDEMNITY, THE LOST
WEEKEND, and SUNSET BOULEVARD.
DOUBLE INDEMNITY, co-written with Raymond
Chandler was a tense and thrilling film noir, while
SUNSET BOULEVARD investigated the bizarre and
tragic life of a once famous silent movie star. Both
proved Wilder’s ability to create successful and artistic
cinema. --PBS (American Masters)
The 1950s saw Wilder produce several films alone including
STALAG 17 (1953) and THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, before teaming
up with the writer/producer I.A.L. Diamond in 1957. The two would
collaborate for over twenty years, producing such major hits as
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1954), SOME LIKE IT HOT
and THE APARTMENT --PBS (American Masters)
Themes of The Apartment
• Baxter is a clerk who gets ahead by
hiring his apartment to philandering
superiors in exchange for a promotion
• Jack Lemmon’s CC Baxter is a symbol
of Joe Public’s complicity in corporate
ethics
Secondary Themes
• Interesting that Wilder hated television
(look for how this is expressed in The
Apartment)
• Baxter as little white dot? (image
theme)
Billy Wilder’s Approach
• Material is almost always serious, but
also has an ironic edge
• “What I hate more than not being taken
seriously is being taken too seriously”
• many of his films have happy endings
(while not necessarily his most famous films like
Double Indemnity)
Cinematography
• Many elements of the cinematography
show Baxter as “the little guy”
Compared to:
Exposition
• Pay close attention to the first few
scenes of the film and think about all of
the different ways exposition is
communicated
•
Exposition (from wikipedia) is a technique by which
background information about the characters, events, or
setting is conveyed in a novel, play, movie or other work of
fiction. This information can be presented through dialogue,
description, flashbacks, or even directly through narrative.
There is a great deal of
detail in the film’s exposition
• Key to executive office
• Office Details
• Television
• Sleeping Pills
• Since the movie is about two people
who become emancipated, it is
important to see what they are
emancipated from (why there is so
much detail in the beginning)
• Baxter is non-judgmental, bending over
backwards for everyone to climb the
corporate ladder
• Miss Kubelik is in love with a married
man and is trapped in an unhealthy
situation
Jack Lemmon’s collaborations with
Wilder link
•
Perfect “every-man”
•
An unlikable character overall, so Lemmon is key to make
him seem like a descent guy
•
considered a genius, because he can do physical comedy
(very complex) and act at the same time