The Apartment
To create the effect of a vast sea of faces laboring grimly and impersonally at their desks in the huge insurance company office, designers Alexandre Trauner and Edward G. Boyle devised an interesting technique. Full-sized actors sat at the desks in the front and children dressed in suits were used at tiny desks toward the rear, followed by even smaller desks with cut-out figures operated by wires. It gave the effect of a much larger space than could have been achieved in the limited studio space.,The layout of Baxter's apartment makes no sense, especially in relation to Dr. Dreyfus's apartment. Dreyfus lives next to Baxter, which means their walls should be adjoining the full length of both flats. However, from inside Baxter's living room, one can see windows in both his kitchen and bedroom facing directly where the Dreyfus apartment should be (and there would likely be a window in the bathroom between the kitchen and bedroom). Dreyfus's apartment would have to veer immediately off to the extreme right when one enters it and be no more than a couple of inches wide in order to allow the kind of set-up seen in Baxter's apartment. This is clearly unrealistic, if not downright impossible.,C.C. Baxter: The mirror... it's broken.
Fran Kubelik: Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.,The 1997 VHS contained the short version of United Artists' 1987 variant.,Featured in Aquarius: Shirley Maclaine/East 100th St./Police 5/Brighton Breezy (1971),Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful)
(1782) (uncredited)
Music by John Francis Wade
English lyrics by Frederick Oakeley (1852),Written by the great filmmaker Billy Wilder, this is a serious, sardonic comedy for people who've known what's its like to feel the pressure of compromising your principles or your self- respect for the sake of getting ahead in life. And there are very few over the age of consent who haven't had to at one time or another. This isn't the laugh out loud comedy of Jim Carrey or the Farrelly brothers, but a subtle, nuanced comedy about two people who have both been jaded in love and yet continue to hope again and again that it will someday work out for them -- mainly because despite the unlikeable things they do, they are both basically decent, nice people. Flawed and even weak at times, but good people. This is a movie that doesn't just make it you laugh, it makes you think. A rare find indeed.,