MovieChat Forums > The Apartment (1960) Discussion > The Brilliance of the Broken Mirror

The Brilliance of the Broken Mirror

posted 15 years ago by ecarle
43 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS

Part of the pleasure of "The Apartment" is to see solid old-fashioned narrative structure in action. Billy Wilder, who co-wrote his scripts with collaborators who helped him with his English(I.A.L. Diamond on "The Apartment"), had a flair for wit, but he also had, at his best, a real talent for creative plotting.

He even had the ability to use images to tell his stories in ways that might make Hitchcock take notice(and Hitchocck DID take notice. He enjoyed Billy Wilder films very much.)

Exhibit A in "The Apartment": the broken mirror.

By the time the big scene with the mirror arrives, Wilder has created characters, laid out the situation and built considerable suspense:

CC Baxter(Jack Lemmon) is lowly "ordinary accountant" in a Manhattan skyscaper insurance company. To advance upwards, he's letting his married managers use his apartment to, uh, schtupp their mistresses.

Baxter may be prostituting his apartment, but he's a nice, decent guy at heart, and he pines for an elevator operator, Fran Kubelik(Shirley MacLaine), who, we can tell, likes him a little bit more than she likes the piggish men all around Baxter. Baxter tries hard to get a date with Fran, and she grants him one: "The Music Man" on Broadway...but only after meeting an ex-flame for a drink.

But, we learn to our great pain, Fran's ex-flame is the Big Boss, JD Sheldrake(Fred MacMurray), and while having those drinks at a Chinese restaurant, Sheldrake convinces Fran to skip her date(Sheldrake doesn't know it is with Baxter) and join him at Baxter's apartment for some make-up sex. (CC Baxter, despite a terrible cold, is shown waiting in the freezing November night outside "The Music Man" theater waiting alone for Fran, who never comes.)

And: One(just one) of Sheldrake's former female conquests, Miss Olsen(Edie Adams) witnesses Sheldrake at the Chinese restaurant taking Fran away.

--- There are laughs in "The Apartment," but Wilder sets up all of the above so that it plays with emotion and pain and yearning. As an audience, we want CC to "land" Fran; his initial attempts to curry her favor, and her tentative wililngness to say "yes," warm our hearts because IN our hearts, we sense these are two nice people who should get together.

But alas, CC is pimping out his apartment and Fran is selling her sexual soul, both of them to a cold-hearted bastard(Sheldrake) who cares little about either of them.

---

The broken mirror -- a small woman's compact make-up hand mirror-- is planted: Baxter found it left behind in his apartment after Sheldrake's tryst with "some girl." Baxter gives it to Sheldrake when Sheldrake visits Baxter's office to confide his interest in using the apartment in the future. Sheldrake reveals to CC that "the girl" threw it out at him; we realize he doesn't particularly care for Fran at all. Wilder(like Hitchcock) makes sure we get a close-up OF the mirror, and how, with the break, it splits the face of the person holding it(here, Baxter) in two. That way, we'll remember the mirror later.

---

The broken mirror pays off:

Its the office Christmas party, a crowded Baccachnal in the "Playboy Cartoon" traditions of 1960. Baxter coaxes Fran out of her elevator to join him for a drink in her office. She consents, having stood him up on that date, and we again -- hopefully, yearningly -- see the potential for this betrodden couple to get together(and, hopefully, to reject/escape their lurid "private traps.")

Just moments before Baxter and Fran enter his office for their drink, Miss Olsen appears to take Fran aside and reveal that she knows Fran is Sheldrake's new mistress, and as a FORMER Sheldrake mistress, she can advise Fran that many came before, and many will come after.

And so, Fran shifts to depressed and forlorn and chilly as she enters Baxter's office for that drink. But he manages to cheer her up with his rather silly bowler hat(an "executive's hat".) Fran helpfully offers Baxter a mirror to see himself in the hat:

The broken mirror.

And we see Baxter's face in that mirror, and we feel -- thanks to Jack Lemmon's wonderfully heartfelt acting -- the body blow to his heart as he realizes that (a) Fran's mirror is THE broken mirror; (b) Fran is Sheldrake's mistress, and (c) Fran and Sheldrake have had sex at Baxter's apartment, IN HIS BED.

None of this is said, and the shot with the mirror is a couple of seconds at most. But everything has been so carefully,lengthily, and beautifully set up in the previous scenes, that it unfolds with stunning power.

And now CC Baxter is as depressed and forlorn and chilly as Fran Kubelik. They are both two devastated people, and the Christmas party jollity all around them only intensifies the pain.

---

Hitchcock was "The Master of Suspense," but Wilder comes awfully close to being the same in "The Apartment." Because Hitchcock's key rule for creating suspense was: "give the audience information that the characters don't have."

In Hitchcock's case, that would be that a detective was going upstairs to meet a little old lady, and ONLY WE KNOW she's a psycho killer with a big knife.

...or, that Cary Grant is searching for the only man who can clear his name("George Kaplan"), and ONLY WE KNOW that man doesn't exist.

...or, that a born loser is being hunted by the police as being London's "Necktie Strangler," and ONLY WE KNOW that the REAL killer is the born loser's "best friend," who is framing him.

---

In "The Apartment," for the longest time:

Baxter loves Fran, but ONLY WE KNOW that Fran is Sheldrake's mistress.

Baxter loans out his apartment to married executives for trysts, but ONLY WE KNOW that Sheldrake and Fran have sex (and sad arguments for Fran about Sheldrake's treatment of her) there.

Sheldrake keeps trying to have Fran selfishly for himself(he probably doens't love her) but ONLY WE KNOW that Sheldrake's underling Baxter loves her too.

(The best suspense, for comedy purposes, has to be with Dr. Dreyfuss, Baxter's next door neighbor. Dreyfuss thinks that Baxter is some kind of womanizing ladies man-sex machine, but ONLY WE KNOW that all that sex Dr. Dreyfuss keeps hearing is the sex of many men, not one sexual superman.)

---

Billy Wilder keeps the suspense churning all through "The Apartment," as the people on screen don't have the information that ONLY WE KNOW.

But at key times, Wilder GIVES those people that information, and allows us to feel their sour emotions as...the truth hurts.

In the great, great "broken mirror scene," potential happiness(Fran will have a holiday drink with Baxter; maybe they can get together) is dashed, first by Miss Olsen telling Fran she is being sexually used, second by Baxter learning(though the broken mirror) that Fran is Sheldrake's mistress. But the suspense continues: Fran doesn't know that BAXTER knows about her and Sheldrake; Baxter doesn't know that Fran now knows she is just "the latest model" of Sheldrake mistress(if he did, he'd know he has a better shot at winning Fran for himself.)

No, Wilder has a few more painful, suspenseful(and, of course, ironically comical) twists in his tale, and "The Apartment" has a ways to go.

Still, that broken mirror scene is a beauty, a textbook lesson in writing plot, writing character, writing dialogue(says Fran of the broken mirror, "I keep it that way to remind me how I feel') and writing suspense...all with the VISUAL marker of the mirror itself, which is the essence of cinematic storyttelling.

[–] korintawanagsanliban 15 years ago

Thanks Ecarle
I love the Apartment

I heart Life
:

[–] filmklassik 15 years ago

Well, he's gone and done it again, folks. With his characteristic wit, clarity and infectious enthusiasm, ecarle has programmed my night's DVD viewing. Two weeks ago he had me riding with THE WILD BUNCH, tonight he has me leasing THE APARTMENT.

[–] ecarle 15 years ago

Well, I am certainly pleased to be pointing you to two of my favorite movies. I prefer to extol the movies I have loved (or liked) to damning the bad ones I hate(which includes some very famous hits.)

It occurs to me that while the ultraviolent "Wild Bunch" and the New York comedy "The Apartment" are well apart in effect, the two films share certain qualities: an emphasis on generating audience sympathy for characters who should not be sympathetic at all(The Wild Bunch are bank robbers and hostage killers; CC Baxter is a spineless careerist who loans his room to superiors for their sexual trysts; Fran Kubelik is "the other woman").

And yet both "Bunch" and "The Apartment" have an overriding sense of bleak melancholy(on the one hand) and surprising integrity of the characters(on the other hand) that pays off in the end:

Jack Lemmon eventually rejects "the apartment deal," and gives up his insurance company career to defy Fred MacMurray and his corrupt cronies.

William Holden(Billy Wilder's favorite leading man OTHER than Jack Lemmon) eventually rejects the corruption of his robber's life and gives up his LIFE to defy the evil Mexican General and his corrupt army.

People can change, but "bad people" change at great cost.

And of course, we never feel that CC Baxter and Pike Bishop(Holden) are really "bad." Because they are played by Jack Lemmon and William Holden.

I would add that the directors of "The Apartment" and "The Wild Bunch," Billy Wilder and Sam Peckinpah, were genuine auteurs, who co-wrote their films and had distinctively cynical-romantic views of mankind.

But "The Wild Bunch" scores higher in my book because Peckinpah had something going on in the "technical cinema skill department," that, like Hitchocck, made his movies more of a visceral rush than Wilder's carefully plotted and nicely shot, but very straightforward, movies.

[–] filmklassik 15 years ago

Agreed on all counts, ecarle.

And your last paragraph is particularly striking to me, probably because it hits so close to home. Let me explain. Your stated preference for the more "bravura" directorial style of Hitchcock and Peckinpah over Wilder's more "invisible" one is telling and, no doubt, one shared by millions of other filmgoers.

But I will always have a soft spot in my heart for The Invisibles. That is, guys like Wilder, Don Siegel, George Roy Hill, Richard Brooks, Robert Wise, Sydney Pollack and (yes, when he isn't being careless and sloppy about it) Clint Eastwood, whose ambition is generally to NEVER CALL ATTENTION TO THEIR DIRECTING.

That wonderful crime novelist Elmore Leonard has a saying about his method of revising his work, which goes something like, "If it looks like writing, I rewrite it."

And that philosophy has its analog in the directing style of the seven filmmakers I mentioned above, as well as some lesser but occasionally formidable talents such as Paul Schrader and David Cronenberg (I am thinking specifically of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE now).

And I suppose I feel a kinship with directors with that sort of "invisible" style because I've got one myself, for better or worse. Although I've been making my living as a scriptwriter for almost thirteen years now, I have recently (in the last three years) started directing too. So far my "corpus" stands at three episodes of episodic TV but, like every other wannabe in town, I am hoping to some day be writing and directing features (stop laughing!)

But here's the thing, ecarle: I will never be a visual "poet". I will never be a Ford, Hitchcock or Peckinpah. It simply isn't in me to be those guys. I lack their gifts for blocking, camera movement and composition (and I wish to Christ I didn't).

But in the same way that "nuts and bolts" writers such as Elmore Leonard, Richard Matheson and James M. Cain showed me that one needn't possess the soaring, elegaic style of a Fitzgerald or a Faulkner in order to make one's living as a writer, so too did Eastwood, Brooks and Pollack liberate my (admittedly limited) filmmaking style with their own "invisible" aesthetic, and thank God they did.

They taught me that although I may never be a Ruth or a Gehrig, I can still be in the line-up, and make a contribution.

And boy does that matter.

[–] ecarle 15 years ago

filmklassik: You're the "real deal"(making a living in Hollywood) and I am not, and yet I expect that the view from the inside well reflects the view from the outside in terms of "the great filmmakers" who came before.

I think I certainly "get" the importance of the "invisible" director, and I would expect that my digging on Hitchocck and Peckinpah reflects "being easily impressed." Guilty as charged.

Rather like (the great) Elmore Leonard's quote about writing, Billy Wilder said something like "If somebody looks at a shot in a movie and says --what a great shot! -- it isn't." Because, Wilder said, that meant the viewer had been taken OUT of the movie.

And yet, such analysis can be somewhat misleading.

"Psycho" has a famously intricate camera move following Tony Perkins up the stairs to get his mother, with the camera "floating" above Perkins high into the rafters and then turning to look down on Perkins carrying Mother out of her room. Its a spectacular, show-offy shot, to be sure, but it also has a NARRATIVE purpose -- to continue to mislead the audience as to what Mother LOOKS like.

Thus, at its best(yeah, Hitchcock) the "showy shot" can have narrative meaning.

I also have to believe that some directors simply didn't have the technical savvy of Hitchocck or Peckinpah to MAKE those shots. Granted, Hitch and Peckinpah ordered other people to do the work(the cameraman, the editors, the grips, etc), but they usually knew about lenses and film-speeds and camera weight and all the things that the crews had to do to make the shots. (Hitchocck's college degree was in engineering.) Wilder and some other guys were a little less confident. I recall Joe Mankewiecz(sp?All About Eve) saying he knew nothing about lenses, and he ceded that knowledge to his DP.

---

Since I very much like "The Apartment" and "Unforgiven" and "The Man Who Would Be King" and "The Professionals" I expect it can be said that I like "the invisibles." I guess what I really like is a good STORY, and guys like Hitchocck and Peckinpah only really scored when they HAD a good story.

Of the modern guys, aging Marty Scorcese certainly strikes me as a "master of cinematic pyrotechnics" but he, too, is story-dependent. Quentin Tarantino has his visual flair, but he also made, arguably, the best movie from any Elmore Leonard book..."Jackie Brown" and emphasized character more than flash.

---

Trivia: near the end of his life and his career, around 1977/78, Alfred Hitchocck optioned an Elmore Leonard novel for the movies: "Unknown Man 89" about a Detroit process server who falls in love with a female alcoholic. Sounds like Hitchcock was trying to "branch out"(as he had towards horror with "Psycho"), into Don Siegel tough-guy thriller-land. Hitchcock tried to interest Burt Reynolds and Steve McQueen in the lead, to no avail. They were too big at the time(McQueen was "semi-retired") and Hitchcock was, alas, far too old to pull it off.

Still, that would have been something to see: Hitchcock does Elmore Leonard. (And the tough-guy/drunk woman love story sounded "Marnie"-ish to me, somehow. Hitchcock Twisted Love.)

[–] filmklassik 15 years ago

Yeah, I am aware of Hitch's (near) involvement with UNKNOWN MAN NO. 89 and for the life of me, ecarle, I never understood his interest. I have read the original novel and enjoyed it, and if it doesn't quite rank up there with HOMBRE, KILLSHOT or SWAG in the Elmore Leonard canon it still makes for pretty terrific reading (Leonard writes very few clunkers, but THE HUNTED is one of them, so avoid it at all costs)

But for all of its virtues, UNKNOWN MAN is still a down-and-dirty crime thriller and about as far from NOTORIOUS and TO CATCH A THIEF as one can get.

In fact, tonally, it bears scant resemblance to the grittiest Hitchcock movie ever -- FRENZY -- a flick that, despite its repellent violence, grainy "70s" film-stock, lack of stars, and thoroughly unlikable protagonist still hews closely to the "innocent man wrongly accused" scenario that Hitch had been recycling for half a century (--or more, actually, since THE LODGER came out in '26).

In other words, you are correct, ecarle. Thirty-some years ago this was a project tailor-made for Don Siegel, Peter Yates, John Frankenheimer, Walter Hill or even the aging John Huston who was recently off FAT CITY -- but not the Master of Suspense.

And something tells me even if he'd gone forward and directed the damn thing, his heart wouldn't have been in it.

Moving on...

Just an addendum to my earlier post: No list of helmers with an "invisible" directing style would be complete if it left out Howard Hawks, a phenomenal talent and as strong an exponent of the "If they're noticing the work, it ain't working" school of filmmaking as you can find.

[–] ecarle 14 years ago

Interesting. A half year later I comment!

[–] mrsmish 14 years ago

I just saw The Apartment for the first time yesterday, courtesy of HD Net on Demand.

Wonderful interplay of comedy/tragedy. And thanks for putting into words the power of the broken mirror scene.

Another terrific, very brief scene - near the end, Fran is leaving the building to go meet Sheldrake and runs into Baxter. He knows where she is going and motions toward an attractive woman waiting near the newsstand, indicating that she is his own date. Fran leaves, and Baxter walks toward the newsstand, never looking at the other woman, who leaves arm in arm with another man. Brilliant! The quickness of the scene never allowed me to analyze it, so that I was convinced, along with Fran, that Baxter was consoling himself with someone new.

[–] kingcarcas 14 years ago

Brilliant comparison! Didn't even notice all these similarities, only thing with me is after she stood him up i didn't want him to end up with her :P

If you don't believe in Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it, put this in your sig.

[–] stevenvh 13 years ago

To advance upwards, he's letting his married managers use his apartment to, uh, schtupp their mistresses.

One small nuance: Baxter doesn't do it to advance upward, he does it because he's just a nobody who can't say no to his bosses. Like somebody else said: he was ashamed that he was letting people use him. He's surprised to hear that he's considered for promotion.

--
Rome. By all means, Rome.

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] onleft23 13 years ago

ha
hooray for hollywood

just want to say t/y for an enjoyable thread

what a world

i heard a radio interview last night about an i love lucy bio book

looked it up at amazon somehow that steered me to youtube
and a really lol clip of a vivian vance ad lib

never really cared for anything lucy or desi
but turns out ethel & fred despised one another
tho desi and 'loose' really liked both in real life

and fred became the orig uncle charley on my three sons ha i didnt remember
that at all

my three sons linked fred mcmurray of course

and the next thing i know im here reading this thread

but boy im thankful i did really worthwhile reading t/y

viv vance jack lemmon man that dont make em like that no more
wilder sui generis of course

but desi too
after frawley died arnez took out a full page spread in the hollywood reporter
layout bordered in black a pic of frawley w/ born died and underneath 'buenos noces amigo'

no ... they dont make em like that no more

[–] Danusha_Goska 12 years ago

Mirrors are all about reflection.

Baxter sees what a phony he is and what a phony narrative he is building around Kubelik and his own exaggeration of his own power (I can put in a good word for you with Sheldrake) in the mirror.

In the apartment, Fran sees what a whore she is and what her best choice is == suicide -- in Baxter's mirror.

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] onleft23 12 years ago

that was a good one bud t/y for an lol

[–] EliotTempleton 10 years ago

I'm just wondering what, if anything, your monologue on I Love Lucy has to do with The Apartment?

[–] shaunarybolt-1 12 years ago

Thank you. A million times, thank you. My faith in humanity is restored by reading this post.

[–] ecarle 12 years ago

Much belatedly(I don't receive post updates), I thank you for reading and for your very kind remarks.

I can use them!

[–] OccasionalPoster 12 years ago

Very well written, ecarle! You seem to know this movie to a T. I just saw this movie for the first couple of times not too long ago, and let me tell you, the scene of the broken mirror is one of the most memorable scenes IMHO. I could just sort of attest that there was some symbolism with the broken mirror, as this is what I think the broken mirror is symbolic for:

Seeing the broken glass, I see it as symbolic for C.G.’s internal struggle to choose between his boss and Fran. Sort of foreshadowing, per se of the decision he'll eventually have to make- his boss or Fran.

Did you ever see the documentary on the making of "The Apartment?" It's very well done and it gives a lot of insight to how Billy Wilder came with the film's concept and developing it into the great comedy-drama we know it is today.

[–] ecarle 12 years ago

Thank you!

---

Seeing the broken glass, I see it as symbolic for C.G.’s internal struggle to choose between his boss and Fran. Sort of foreshadowing, per se of the decision he'll eventually have to make- his boss or Fran.

---

That's a good symbolic "call." With everything I wrote about the build-up and payoff, the shot ITSELF has meaning. And yes, maybe it shows CC his own "split decision" to make.

---

Did you ever see the documentary on the making of "The Apartment?" It's very well done and it gives a lot of insight to how Billy Wilder came with the film's concept and developing it into the great comedy-drama we know it is today.

---

I've seen the documentary and I've read a coupla Wilder books. The two more notable points(I think) are:

ONE : ANOTHER movie inspired Wilder to write this story: "Brief Encounter," about a love affair between people married to other people. They use the bed of a friend(for unseen) encounters. And Wilder wondered: "What of the male friend...how did he feel getting into a warm bed vacated by lovers?"

TWO: I'm not sure when "Brief Encounter" came out -- late forties? -- but as "The Apartment" took root in Wilder's head he realized something: he had to wait to make it until U.S. movie censorship had lessened a bit. There was still a Hays Code in 1960, but it could be "bent"(as Hitchcock did the same year with "Psycho.") Evidently, Billy Wilder didn't believe this movie could have been made in 1952.

[–] OccasionalPoster 12 years ago

"Brief Encounter" was released in 1945 as a British film, and I do remember hearing that in the documentary, something I found rather fascinating. Wilder was like, "I'd like to know who was the man who let them use the apartment in the first place," and the rest is movie history.

It's probably a good thing Wilder waited a while to make "The Apartment," for like you said, the Hays Code was still around, but it became more and more lenient through the sixties until 1968, when the MPAA was founded.

[–] ecarle 11 years ago

There were quite a few directors "waiting for the chance" to tell certain stories, that's for sure. The breakthroughs of 1958-64 were important, and then they got the "R" rating in 1968...but all that really bought them was nudity, cussing and the like.

[–] ecarle 11 years ago

bump

[–] ecarle 10 years ago

No, wait again...they are shrinking this board fast!

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle 10 years ago

Cecil B. DeMille had a sign hanging in his office: "Say it with a prop."

Wilder's hero, Ernst Lubitsch, would take a cane, a belt, a door...and be able to suggest a sexual liason. It's one of those skills that silent filmmakers specialized in.

---

That's a great rule. Wilder uses it here...and Hitchcock used it practically all the time -- many of his "MacGuffins" were props (a cigarette lighter, a necklace, a matchbook, a necktie...)

---

A veteran silent film scenarist working in the sound era was once told to show friction in a scene between a married couple, and he did it no dialogue: the husband and wife are riding an elevator, the doors open, and a pretty lady walks in. The husband removes his hat.

---

A great example.

---

Say it with a prop.

The other key prop in The Apartment is...a key (I'm not sure we even get a close-up of it). When Sheldrake demands Baxter's apartment key so he can continue his affair with Miss Kubelick there, it's a crushing moment when Baxter surrenders the key to Sheldrake....only to our and Sheldrake's surprise, it's actually the key to the executive washroom, and Baxter has just told

Sheldrake to take this job and ----- --.

---

That's another great "prop use" in this film, and another reason why it won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

Its a "twist," really -- we think that Baxter is surrendering, giving in to Sheldrake by giving him the key to his apartment to use with Fran, but he's not only NOT doing so -- he's turning in the symbol of executive power he had just been given. And he gets a great line:

"I'm giving you the executive washroom key because I'm all washed up here."

[–] OccasionalPoster 10 years ago

Hi ecarle!

I'm sorry that it has been two years since posting on this thread but I finally watched Brief Encounter for the very first time. It is funny to think that my interest for this film all began with The Apartment.

My, the time flies!

[–] valedictatorian1 10 years ago

Great stuff, analysis-wise.

[–] Piperson 10 years ago

I came to praise the broken compact scene as well. Jack Lemmon has a perfect stunned look when he realizes who Sheldrake's girlfriend is. It is really the turning-point of the movie and, for once, Lemmon lets the moment speak for itself.

I get kind of annoyed with him when he is always adding a "bit of business" like with the nose spray and the tissues in the pocket but he reacts beautifully here.

One of my favorite movies and for once, the comments don't disappoint. You dudes are solid.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Thank you!

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

bump

[–] roger1 (2445) a year ago

bump