Today, not just in regard to the Supreme Court, Americans seem sharply divided about morality. Is it an absolute standard we measure our actions and policies against? Or is it a menu from which we select arguments to achieve the outcomes we desire? Should we always follow our conscience, or is it alright sometimes to cheat a little to get something we really want?
In this context one of Hollywood’s finest movies, “The Apartment” (1960), could not be more timely.
Directed by Billy Wilder, co-written with I.A.L. Diamond as a follow-up to their classic comedy “Some Like It Hot,” the film follows C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), a clerk at a New York insurance company who works in a huge office where rows of faceless coworkers at identical desks recede grimly into the distance….