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So someone fill a guy in on what is so controversial in this movie.
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Having written that I did not think it particularly controversial, I’ll write some on what might have been considered controversial. There are at least two areas to consider when considering controversy in the movie: the way office work and politics are portrayed and the depiction of sexual relations outside of marriage. Now, to be sure these two themes are intertwined in the film (as they are in life), but here I’ll write about them separately.
IIRC, the main topic of discussion when this film was released was the way corporate life was depicted. The film is very critical of this existence. There are masses of guys working for not much. Wilder makes a point of this, as we learn Baxter’s (Lemmon) salary early on in a voice over, and it is pretty small.
Aside from the salary, the environment is depicted as dehumanizing. The cinematography with the rows of desks and the trek to the offices amply demonstrate this. Add to this, that there is little chance of advancement: we can tell this by Baxter’s office mate’s comment as to how long he has been in his job.
Now the only way out seemed to be to curry favor with the bosses. And here Wilder is brutal in how low Baxter sinks (and how lowly he is really considered by the bosses).
The discussion points at the time were centered around ‘is corporate life really like that? And, ‘I wouldn’t do that to get ahead, would you?’ In short, the same kinds of things we might say today on a film about Enron or MCI. It would be discussed, but would not be truly controversial.
In the area of sexual politics, it is well to remember that in 1960, we were just emerging from an era where even married couples slept in double beds and no woman went astray without some dire moral (or physical) consequence. Here, everyone cheats. At least in the office—the only married couple we see who don’t cheat are the doctor and his wife who live next door to Baxter. And not only does everyone cheat, they are all (at best) serial cheaters and often cheat just flit from girl to girl.
And it is not as though there is any shortage of willing females. Most who understand that they have no chance of being anything other than the girlfriend. And the women cheat also, as the jockey’s wife tries to get Baxter into bed.
As a bit of an aside, it was sort of against the code (and a bit unexpected in the film) for anyone other than a best friend (even an ex-girlfriend) to tell the wife of the husband’s affair. Of course it happened, but not so often as one would think.
Now these girls suffer no consequences—in fact Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) lives happily ever after—or at least as happily as she can. And neither do the men, although Baxter’s boss (Fred MacMurry) is tossed out of the house and loses his family—something that did not often happen to the men.
These things too were all discussed, but it is not as though we needed this film to remind us that people cheat on their spouses—so again I don’t think that this was particularly controversial. Probably the most controversial point raised was not so much realized then, though it would be today. Now we would all consider that these women were exploited by the men.
This view was truly controversial then and not much discussed.
I’ve mentioned a few.
