The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond)

If there's one thing I love about Billy Wilder, it's how he's so damn good at setting things up and paying them off. Sometimes it's small details like Baxter's cold. It comes out of his situation with the apartment - waiting outside for someone to leave. But then the cold escalates and initiates props like the nasal spray and kleenex tissues. It climaxes in the first Sheldrake scene where Bud gets the promotion for lending his key to the big boss.

He also sets up and pays off bigger things in terms of theme that doesn't necessarily materialize physically. For instance, in the theme of the mensch, established by Bud's next door neighbor. It's ultimately what Bud should aspire to be and yet it is what he can't be as long as he's lending out his apartment to his superiors.

Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond are masters of the story beat as well. There's never an empty moment or a meaningless moment. They're always pushing the story forward.

Interestingly, The Apartment seems to be a mix of both pathos and comedy. I have a feeling it was Diamond who brought more of the comedy and Wilder who thought of the pathos. He was inspired by David Lean's "Brief Encounter," in which a man and woman have an affair at someone's apartment. Wilder was intrigued by the person who lent out the apartment and this formed the seed of the final film. Considering Diamond was the writing partner, he no doubt brought levity to the whole thing. I almost wonder if perhaps Wilder was more serious than one might expect (especially after seeing "Some Like It Hot") and it was his co-writers who either steered him closer to comedy (like Diamond) or toward drama (like Charles Brackett, with whom he wrote "Double Indemnity" and "Sunset Boulevard").

This was another of Wilder's scripts that wasn't complete before filming began. They would literally be writing as they went. I suppose seeing what they had helped show what they needed. I don't understand how this is even possible, but Wilder managed it for the majority of his movies. For this script, both of them won Oscars, so I guess it works.