Das Appartement

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.

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)