I'm not sure about that. It feels as if the dialogue and screenplay is written by a man. I will always question the accuracy of women's roles and dialogue if written by a man.
Buddy Boy is totally clobbered by that mirror, and Kubilik doesn't even see it because she doesn't know what he's just realized about her. What a great moment in film.
I laugh every time when they walk into his office and the couple is making out in the corner, just a perfect microcosm of his life. Such a great visual gag. Wilder was a genius
I love the ingenious detail of the employees smooching in Baxter’s office, thereby re-enacting the dilemma with his apartment. Now he can just kick them out…
2:57-3:33 Shirley McClaine's performance is absolutely sublime, she used only her posture and facial expression to convey more meaning to the scene than any scripted dialogue would provide. That is the beauty of her talent...it transcends words.
The scene with the broken mirror captures the moment where he realizes that his upward mobility is really just a result of him being used, and she is unwittingly part of it. At the end of the movie he quits, but he gets the girl :)
This is one of my favorite scenes in movie history. It is packed full of information, and almost all of it is visual. The acting tells the story that is between the lines. Just a devastating and funny scene.
I miss Jack Lemmon. He was totally unique and there is no one else like him. Jimmy Stewart in some roles, when he was young, had a similar quality. Youthful Jimmy could play C. C. Baxter and Lemmon c. 1960 could play Macaulay Connor. The acting in this scene is brilliant and evokes the fugitive sadness that can pervade the Christmas season for many people.
This is how real films are made. The director trusts and respects the audience’s intelligence, and allows them to “add two plus two,” as Billy Wilder himself used to say. It is not through dialogue that Baxter learns the truth, but merely by seeing a broken mirror that he (and we) have specifically seen before … Phenomenal writing.
I'm moving in old guilt. I need to chill. This was my favorite film when I was 20. I watched it every night after I got home from art school but there's some really dark themes here & while I can do dark themes well that doesn't mean I want them much anymore. I'm going to go get some fresh air. #rabbithole
Saw this movie for the first time today, and I'm wondering how to read Miss Olsen here. Is she trying to twist the knife in the "new model's" gut? Or is she trying to rip the Band-Aid off -- be sympathetic, commiserate, give Fran fair warning about what she's gotten herself into so she doesn't get hurt worse later?
I think maybe 90% commiserate/warn her and 10% twist the knife. She mentions later to the boss that it was awful seeing him parade his new mistresses around, so seeing Fran at the Chinese restaurant had to have stung a little. And she's buzzed here, so that anger is coming out a bit. But she's overall a nice woman and I think is just laying it all out for Fran because she deserves to know the full picture.
Not only does Baxter realize that it's her compact when he looks in the mirror... In both this scene and the scene where he gives the compact to Fred MacMurray, their reflections in the mirror are doubled... two-faced.
I understand this Christmas office party scene was real held 2 days before Christmas on Wednesday, December 23rd, 1959 during filming correct? I await your answer.
Billy Wilder was a sorcerer! Shirley MacLaine certainly deserved the Oscar that year over Elizabeth Taylor's vomit inducing performance in BUTTERFIELD 8.
