The ApartmentThe ApartmentBilly Wilder, 1960Billy 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

• Interesting that Wilder hated television (look for how this is expressed in The Apartment)

• Baxter as little white dot? (image theme)

Secondary Themes

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