Films › Screenwriting
The Apartment
Directed by Billy Wilder, 1960
Wilder and Diamond built the whole script on objects: a key, a mirror, a deck of cards, each planted and paid off. Tone moves from office comedy to attempted suicide and back without a false step. The protagonist's moral turn is dramatised through a single physical action rather than a speech. It is the standard reference for planting and payoff. Joseph LaShelle's cinemascope frames the office as an endless grid of identical desks, visually stating the protagonist's anonymity before a word of dialogue explains it. Wilder shot the ending in a single unbroken card game that resolves the romance without a kiss or a speech. Any writer studying structure should note how thoroughly the physical production design was built to serve thematic ideas rather than mere setting. Jack Lemmon's blocking within that grid, always slightly out of step with his coworkers, does character work no line of dialogue could accomplish as economically.
What to watch for
Watch the broken compact mirror and trace every appearance of it.
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